A trillionaire is an individual with a net worth equal to at least one trillion in U.S. dollars or a similarly valued currency, such as the euro or the British pound. Currently, no one has yet claimed trillionaire status, although some of the world’s richest individuals may only be a few years away from this milestone.
Key Takeaways
- In the United States, the title “trillionaire” refers to someone with a net worth of at least $1 trillion.
- Net worth refers to a person’s total assets—including business interests, investments, and personal property—minus their debts.
- No one has yet claimed the title of trillionaire, although the speed at which the world’s wealthiest individuals have grown their fortunes suggests that it could happen in just a few years.
- As of 2022, 18 countries have a gross domestic product (GDP) that exceeds $1 trillion.
Calculating Net Worth
Extremely affluent individuals often derive their wealth from a variety of sources: business interests, investments, real estate holdings, cash, and personal property. To tabulate your net worth, start by totaling up all of those assets. You then deduct liabilities—everything from personal loans to mortgages. Someone with at least $1 trillion (or one trillion euros) of net assets would qualify as a trillionaire.
For those in the highest strata of wealth, arriving at an accurate net worth figure tends to be a complex undertaking. While some assets are relatively stable, the value of business interests, in particular, can fluctuate wildly from one day to the next.
In fact, Forbes, which publishes the preeminent list of the world’s wealthiest people, operates a “Real-Time Billionaires List” that is updated by the minute, based on stock valuations.Sitting atop it in the first three slots, as of Feb. 19, 2024, are Bernard Arnault & family ($221.7 billion), Elon Musk ($205.2 billion), and Jeff Bezos ($190.7 billion), who are each separated by $15 to $16 billion. Trailing them in slots four and five are Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison.
Examples of Net Worth: Who’s on First?
Let’s look at French fashion magnate Arnault. Most of his and his family's roughly $221.7 billion wealth isn’t simply sitting in a bank account. It’s tied to the value of his holding company, LVMH, which owns famed brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Hennessy. A quick rise in the value of LVMH stock, relative to the holdings of Musk and Bezos, vaulted him to the first slot in May 2021. And, indeed, the three men often change positions with each other.
As the value of Arnault’s brands surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, so did his net worth. Back in March 2020, Forbes estimated it at $76 billion. In nearly four years as of February 2024, that figure had grown nearly 200%.
Second on the current Forbes list is Musk, who has a current net worth of approximately $205.2 billion. As of February 2024, he owns roughly 21% of electric car manufacturer Tesla and about 42% of the aerospace company SpaceX. Bezos, founder of Amazon, is second and worth $190 billion, with a 12.3% ownership of shares in the online retailer’s stock (AMZN on Nasdaq).
As an example of how volatile those personal wealth estimates can be, Musk lost a reported $8.9 billion in one day back in December 2020, when a J.P. Morgan analyst concluded that Tesla shares were significantly overvalued.
The World’s First Trillionaire?
Even the likes of Arnault and Musk—with $221.7 billion and $205 billion, respectively—might seem a long way off from reaching the trillionaire designation. However, the pace at which some of the world’s richest people have been able to accumulate wealth suggests that it may only be a few short years before someone garners that designation.
Arnault, for instance, was able to increase his net worth by about six-fold in eight years—from $33.5 billion in 2014 to $221.7 billion in 2024. Were he to repeat that accomplishment, he would be a trillionaire before the decade is over.
Musk, who has built his wealth on game-changing companies—Tesla in the realm of electric cars and SpaceX for commercially developed rockets—may stand as good a chance as any. Just five years ago in 2019, the enigmatic entrepreneur had a net worth estimated at $22.3 billion. As of Feb. 19, 2024, his wealth is in the ballpark of $205 billion. If those ventures continue on anything like their current valuation trajectory, then he could get to trillionaire status before long.
Bezos, who owns The Washington Post and aerospace firm Blue Origin in addition to his stake in Amazon, has similarly experienced a rapid buildup of wealth. Since 2017, the Forbes estimate of Bezos’ net worth soared from nearly $72.8 billion to $190 billion, a more than 2 1/2 times gain.
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
To put it mildly, a fortune of $1 trillion is an enormous amount of money—so much that it’s hard to conceptualize how much wealth that actually is.
Here’s some context: According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, taken in 2022, the median net worth of U.S. households was $192,900. Thus, a trillionaire would have wealth equal to 5.2 million times that of the typical American family.
Here is another way to put that amount of personal treasure in perspective: It took the U.S. Senate months of arduous negotiations to agree on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill which was passed in November 2021. That was largely because many Republicans balked at that much additional federal spending (though, technically, the bill has only $550 billion of new expenditures).
Net assets of $1 trillion represents a greater sum than the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria. In fact, only 18 countries have a GDP that exceeds $1 trillion.
The Bottom Line
No individual has claimed the status of trillionaire just yet. But a net worth equal to at least one trillion in U.S. dollars or a similarly valued currency isn't unattainable, but it will be a couple of years yet. Only 18 countries have a GDP that exceeds that amount.
