Elon Musk is the world’s richest person by a wide margin, helped by SpaceX and Tesla shares. Photograph: Image Press Agency/AlamyElon Musk is the world’s richest person by a wide margin, helped by SpaceX and Tesla shares. Photograph: Image Press Agency/AlamyNumber of billionaires globally soars by 13% amid AI shares boomBillionaires’ wealth grew by 25% on average in the year ended in April, research from Swiss bank UBS finds
The number of billionaires in the world has jumped by 13% to a record 3,302 people, new figures show, as the super-rich accumulate wealth at an accelerating rate.
Billionaires’ wealth grew by 25% on average in the year ended in April, compared with a 10.8% rise in average personal wealth around the world, the Swiss bank UBS found.
There were 18 people who had amassed wealth between $50bn (£37.8bn) and $100bn, with a further 19 people who were worth more than $100bn. Of these people, 15 were based in the US.
Doubt that Elon Musk ‘earned’ his trillion? Rightwing media says you’re in an ‘impotent envy cult’Read moreJames Mazeau, an economist at the bank, said billionaires had benefited from the AI boom in the stock market.
“Most [billionaire] wealth is tied to listed companies,” he said. “So part of the rise is due to equity markets.
“The AI boom story is fuelling equity markets. In countries where there is a lot of participation and equity market, this is leading to an increase in wealth.”.
The millionaire class has also been rapidly expanding, according to UBS, which found the global millionaire population reached more than 57.5 million last year. This was also helped by rising stock markets and, because the millionaire metric is measured in US dollars, a relatively weak greenback last year.
The US, where more than 440,000 people became millionaires for the first time, made up almost half of the growth in 2025. In the UK alone, more than 43,000 people became millionaires last year.
It comes as the gap between the world’s richest and poorest continues to grow. Last year, the World Inequality Report found fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity.
There have been growing calls around the world for political leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, amid concern that the wealthiest in society are also buying political power.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, Elon Musk, is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $1tn, according to the Forbes rich list. It ranks Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, as second and third, with a net worth of $289bn and $266.6bn, respectively.
The Sunday Times rich list ranked the Hinduja family as the richest in the UK, with a net worth of £35bn. Gopichand Hinduja, the billionaire head of the family with interests across oil, banking and real estate, died aged 85 last year.
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There were 156 UK-based billionaires in 2025, according to the newspaper’s rich list, which marked the biggest fall in its 37-year history, down from 165 the year before.
Reports of the super-rich fleeing Britain have also proliferated in the past year, with many wealth advisers attributing the trend to the UK’s abolition of the non-dom tax regime.
However, Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS, said many reports across Europe exaggerated the movement of wealthy people.
“It is a relatively low number overall, and some of them subsequently went back,” he said. “But what you’re not seeing is them shutting their businesses and moving their businesses. The economic activity that is generated by the wealth holders tends not to follow them into tax exile.
“This idea that the wealthy have suitcases packed by the door ready to go at the first sign of tax increase, this is just not happening.”
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