Mapped: The Top 10 Billionaire Cities in 2020

In 2020, the world gained 493 new billionaires—that’s one every 17 hours.

For the last seven years, New York City has been home to more billionaires than any other city in the world. However, last year marked a monumental shift in the status quo.

Beijing has unseated the Big Apple, and is now home to 100 billionaires. That’s one more billionaire than the 99 living in New York City.

Today’s map uses data from Forbes to display the top 10 cities that house the most billionaires.

Where do the Most Billionaires Live?

The richest of the rich are quite concentrated in cities, but some cities seem to best suit the billionaire lifestyle. Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 billionaire capitals and the collective net worth of all the ultra wealthy that live there.

Some cities have some obvious billionaires that come to mind. New York’s richest person and former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is worth $59 billion. Beijing’s richest billionaire is the founder of TikTok (among other things), Zhang Yiming with a net worth of $35.6 billion.

In terms of the locations themselves, London, New York, and San Francisco are the only Western cities to make the list. Though New York was ousted from the top position last year, altogether the city’s billionaires are still worth more than Beijing’s.

One new city to make the top 10 list of billionaire cities was Hangzhou, the home of Jack Ma. It booted out Singapore from the 10th spot.

East Meets West

More than half of the top 10 cities are located in Asia, providing evidence of the shift eastwards when it comes to seats of wealth. Five of the six Asian cities listed are all in China.

What’s helped lead to this?

The country has seen an e-commerce boom, not in the least thanks to the pandemic. Additionally, the efficient handling of COVID-19 has allowed the economy to get back on track much more quickly than other countries. According to the BBC, 50% of China’s new billionaires have made their wealth either through tech or manufacturing.

Four of the Chinese cities on the list also had the biggest billionaire growth in 2020. Each of them gained more than 10 net new billionaires:

• 🇨🇳 Hangzhou: 21
• 🇨🇳 Shanghai: 18
• 🇨🇳 Shenzhen: 24
• 🇨🇳 Beijing: 33

The only other city to gain more than 10 new billionaires in 2020 was San Francisco with 11.

Now sitting at 698 billionaires, China is coming up on the 724 held by the United States. Beijing overtaking NYC could be the beginning of a larger tipping point.

Shifting Tides

Asia-Pacific’s collective 1,149 billionaires are worth $4.7 trillion, while U.S. billionaires are worth $4.4 trillion in total wealth.

Overall, it looks like the wealth tides may be turning as China continues to progress economically and more billionaires become based in the East over the West.

Visualizing the Richest People in the World

Over $567 billion has been amassed by the 10 richest people in the world in less than a year.

To put that into perspective, that’s more than sevenfold the wealth accumulated by the top 10 in the time period prior. As just one example, Elon Musk witnessed his wealth increase at least 500% in the last year. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has earned a cool extra $68.6 billion.

With data from the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, we navigate how the wealth of various uber-affluent groups have changed since the beginning of the pandemic.

The 10 Richest People in the World

With a net worth of $182 billion, Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest in the world.

After 26 years, Bezos announced he would step down as Amazon CEO to become executive chairman to focus on Blue Origin, among other endeavors. The private company states that it is “opening the promise of space to all” and is planning to launch New Glenn, its first rocket in the second half of 2022.

Based on data as of March 1, 2021 here are the 10 wealthiest individuals worldwide:

Top 10 Wealth Growth

With a stunning 1,172% growth rate year-over-year, Daniel Gilbert, CEO of the largest mortgage lending company in the U.S., has seen his wealth multiply the fastest.

Gilbert, who founded Quicken Loans at 22, took its parent company public in August.

With his cult-like following, Elon Musk has also seen tremendous wealth growth. At one point Musk even briefly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.

This is impressive, since Jeff Bezos’ wealth ballooned over 70% in the same time frame. Similarly, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett have all seen double-digit growth.

Who’s In and Who’s Out?

Among the newest to join the billionaire’s club is Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble at 31 years old.

Wolfe Herd is the youngest American woman to take a company public ever, with the February 2021 IPO raising $2.2 billion. Bumble is the second-largest dating company to go public after Match Group, which owns 45 dating companies including Tinder.

By contrast, last year’s youngest billionaire, Kylie Jenner, fell off the list after allegedly inflating her net worth. Interestingly, the Kardashian’s took great lengths to show Forbes the extent of her wealth, including showing them their tax returns along with invitations to their mansions.

Still, Jenner’s net worth stands at roughly $700 million.

A New Gilded Age?

Given the staggering growth of the ultra-wealthy in recent years, today’s wealth concentration is now comparable to America’s Gilded Age.

At the time, John D. Rockefeller was the richest person in the world—worth roughly $285 billion in today’s terms. His businesses produced 1.6% of total U.S. economic output.

By comparison, Jeff Bezos, at $182 billion, still has a little ways to go just yet.