If you happen to be a billionaire, then 2024 was a very good year.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, the 500 wealthiest people in the world saw their net worth rise by a collective $10 trillion over the past 12 months. While persistent dissatisfaction with the economy was a major factor in President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in November, the people at the very top are prospering like never before.
Americans comprise 14 of the world’s 15 richest people — and nearly 40% of the top 500, some 191 in all. Excluding Elon Musk, 21 of the wealthiest people in the world reside in the Bay Area, and their aggregate net worth now totals a colossal $867 billion, up $288 billion over last year.
No surprise, Big Tech leads the way.
Apart from the Walton family, descendants of the Walmart founder, virtually all the gains at the top went to executives of technology companies, dominated by familiar Silicon Valley names like Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.
In percentage terms, the biggest gainers were Jensen Huang of chipmaker Nvidia, which rode the AI boom to become the world’s largest company by market capitalization for a brief period this year, and Brian Armstrong of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which returned to the Bay Area in 2023. But the biggest overall gainer was Zuckerberg, who netted more than $80 billion and cemented his position as the world’s third-wealthiest person.
The only Bay Area mega-billionaires to lose money in 2024 were three men whose wealth is tied to Airbnb, the short-term rental giant whose stock price was mostly flat in 2024.
Musk remains by far the richest person in the world. While the social media platform X relocated to Texas and Musk himself is living in a cottage on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump’s Florida home, he remains inextricably involved in San Francisco affairs.
The year saw a dramatic reversal of fortunes for Musk, who entered 2024 a near laughingstock due to Tesla’s plummeting share price and ongoing fallout from dropping $46 billion on the ailing social media platform once known as Twitter. A year later, Musk’s net worth is a staggering $441 billion, having nearly doubled from $229 billion in January.
So much wealth is required to land on the Billionaire Index that many well-known Bay Area figures didn’t make the cut, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.