Planet Earth has never had so many billionaires

By Ana Nicolaci da Costa, CNN

London (CNN) — The number of billionaires worldwide – and their combined wealth – reached record highs this year, buoyed in particular by gains in tech stocks, Swiss bank UBS has found.

The world had 2,919 billionaires on April 4, when UBS completed that part of its research, the largest number since the bank started collecting the data in 1995.

“With tech shares and financial asset prices generally rising, despite volatility, billionaires’ total wealth reached a new high,” UBS wrote in its annual report on billionaires published Thursday.

The MSCI World Index – which tracks more than 1,300 large and mid-sized public companies in developed markets – rose around 7% in the year to early April.

Billionaires’ combined wealth reached $15.8 trillion, an increase of 13% over 12 months, lifted by existing tech billionaires’ appreciating assets and by new billionaires across a range of sectors, the bank said. The number of billionaires jumped by 237 in the 12 months to April 4.

Tech billionaires’ assets grew by almost a quarter to $3 trillion, bolstered by the increasing value of their shares in artificial intelligence-linked companies such as Meta (META), Oracle (ORCL) and Nvidia (NVDA).

The six US tech billionaires whose wealth increased the most became $171 billion richer between them, UBS said, meaning that each became $28.5 billion richer on average.

“This surge is closely tied to their companies’ AI capabilities, from foundational chipmaking to AI-powered cloud infrastructure,” the bank wrote.

The total number of US billionaires rose to 924, accounting for almost a third of the global billionaire population. China now has 470 billionaires, second only to the United States.

UBS surveyed its billionaire clients between July and September 2025 and they identified tariffs, geopolitics and policy uncertainty as the top risks of 2026.

“What billionaires worry about most depends on where they live,” the bank wrote. For instance, 75% of billionaires in Asia-Pacific were concerned about tariffs, while 70% of American billionaires worried about higher inflation or a major geopolitical conflict.

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