Breaking Down the Wealth of America’s Top 20 Billionaires

Breaking Down the Wealth of America’s Top 20 Billionaires

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This graphic visualizes the net worth of America’s top 20 billionaires, as of Dec. 11, 2024. Data comes from the Forbes Real-time Billionaires List.

These 20 individuals have a combined wealth of $2.7 trillion, which is more than the annual GDP of countries like Russia ($2.2T), Canada ($2.1T), and Italy ($2.0T).

Data and Key Takeaways

Tech founders & CEOs dominate this ranking of America’s top 20 billionaires. We’ve provided the raw data in the following table.

Net worth is the total value of someone’s assets minus their debts. In the case of billionaires, most of their wealth comes from their ownership of businesses.

For example, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has climbed the billionaire rankings as his company quickly become one of the world’s most valuable corporations this year.

For more context, check out this graphic which shows how much a $5,000 investment in Nvidia would be worth today.

Musk Takes Off Into Space

Another billionaire who’s wealth has skyrocketed in 2024 is Elon Musk.

This is primarily due to his ownership stakes in Tesla (12% excluding options) and SpaceX (42%), and xAI (54%).

SpaceX is worth approximately $350 billion based on a private share sale in Dec. 2024, while xAI could be valued at up to $50 billion.

Sam Walton’s Heirs

The three retail billionaires featured in this graphic are the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. Together, Rob, Jim, and Alice control roughly 45% of Walmart’s shares.

Walmart is the world’s most valuable retailer after Amazon, though Amazon has significant operations in other areas like cloud computing.

To learn more about Walmart’s massive scale, check out our classic post from 2019, Walmart Nation: Mapping America’s Biggest Employers.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

If you enjoyed this post, check out The Best Performing S&P 500 Stocks Over Time on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.