For the second month in a row, gyrating tech stocks rearranged the ranking of more than half of the world’s ten richest people. As a result, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg swapped places with Larry Ellison to beome the world’s fourth richest person again, Warren Buffett moved ahead of Google cofounder Larry Page, and Bill Gates overtook both of the Google cofounders to become the world’s seventh richest person—up two spots in a month—as of the stroke of midnight on September 1.

Elon Musk maintained his spot as the world’s richest person, worth an estimated $243.7 billion, $3 billion more than a month ago following an increase in the value of rocket firm SpaceX. Lately, Musk has been a vocal critic of a Brazilian Supreme Court judge over a ruling that froze bank accounts for his Starlink satellite internet business. Regulators in Brazil moved to shut down X on August 30 to comply with a Brazilian judge’s order.

The biggest gainer in the past month was Zuckerberg. His fortune rose by nearly $14 billion to an estimated $180.5 billion as Meta Platforms’ shares climbed 9% during August. That gain moved him ahead of Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison to rank the Meta CEO as No. 4 richest in the world. He’s traded places with Ellison several times throughout the year so far.

The biggest loser of this elite cohort in the past month was Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos. His fortune fell by $7.8 billion to $197 billion due to a drop in Amazon shares. Despite the decline, Bezos held onto his rank as No. 2 richest. But the gap between Musk and Bezos widened to nearly $47 billion on September 1, from just under $36 billion at the start of August.

Gates’s move to No. 7 richest—up from No. 9 a month ag0—was partly due to a drop in the price of Google-parent Alphabet shares, which shaved a bit more than $6 billion off the fortunes of Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now ranked No. 8 and 9, respectively

Together the world’s top 10 richest are worth a combined $1.66 trillion—about $31 billion more than a month ago.

Forbes has been keeping track of the world’s billionaires since 1987. In April we found 2,781 of them for our annual list.

Here are the 10 richest people on Earth as of September 1, 2024 at 12 a.m. Eastern time, according to Forbes. Stock prices fluctuate routinely, so these net worths may change on a daily basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes on our Real Time list of billionaires.

Key Facts

10. Steve Ballmer

Musk is CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX; chairman and CTO of social media company X, formerly known as Twitter; and founder of artificial intelligence firm xAI. He owns 13% of Tesla stock and has pledged some of his stock as collateral for loans. The electric car maker’s shareholders voted in June in favor of Musk keeping nearly $50 billion of performance based stock options in what a Delaware judge had earlier called “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets,” when she voided the award this January. But the matter won’t be resolved anytime soon. A lengthy appeal of the Delaware ruling is likely to follow. Until Musk receives those options, Forbes will continue to discount the Tesla options from the pay package by 50%. In the meantime, Musk’s fortune rose by $3 billion in the past month, partly due to the increased value of his 42%........

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