Elon Musk Tops Forbes' World Billionaires List For First Time

Tesla's Elon Musk on Wednesday topped the Forbes' World Billionaires List for the first time. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos came in second.

There are 2,668 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes' most recent annual compilation. Collectively, they are worth $12.7 trillion.

Forbes said both the number of billionaires and their collective wealth has dropped since last year, NPR reported.

"War, pandemic and sluggish markets hit the world's billionaires this year," Forbes said.

America still leads the world, with 735 billionaires worth a collective $4.7 trillion.

China (including Macau and Hong Kong) remains No. 2 on the list, with 607 billionaires worth a collective $2.3 trillion. But China has 87 fewer billionaires on the list this year because of a government crackdown on tech companies.

Russia, with 34 fewer billionaires on the list this year, was impacted by sanctions because of its invasion of Ukraine.

Forbes used stock prices and exchange rates from March 11, 2022 to calculate net worths. 

These are the 10 richest people in the world, according to Forbes:

1. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, $219 billion

2. Jeff Bezos, executive chair of Amazon, $171 billion

3. Bernard Arnault and his family, who oversee the luxury goods giant LVMH, $158 billion

4. Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, $129 billion

5. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, $118 billion

6. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, $111 billion

7. Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, $107 billion

8. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, $106 billion

9. Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO, $91.4 billion

10. Mukesh Ambani, chair of Reliance Industries, $90.7 billion

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