The Forbes 2026 billionaire list just dropped, and the numbers are staggering.
A record 3,428 billionaires now share a combined fortune of $20.1 trillion. That’s 400 new people on the list, and an additional $4 trillion in the pockets of billionaires.
Sitting at the top of the list is Elon Musk, with an eye-popping $839 billion, followed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (1).
This is more than a scoreboard for the ultra-rich. Dig into the profiles, and patterns emerge showing how billionaires build their empires, and what ordinary investors can steal from their playbook.
One theme runs through many of the Forbes profiles: the richest billionaires built their wealth through ownership of a technology company.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has the majority of his fortune tied to ownership stakes in companies like Tesla and SpaceX and the rest in an assortment of cash and investments, according to Forbes (2).
The fortunes of Page and Brin are mainly in the form of stakes in Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
As for Jeff Bezos, his main source of wealth was the e-commerce giant he founded, Amazon (3).
Jensen Huang, whose fortune skyrocketed alongside the AI boom, built his wealth through the graphics chip company Nvidia (4).
Seven of the top 10 on the list are linked to tech, showcasing the massive impact that technology and artificial intelligence has had on the upper echelon of the economy in the last few years.
Once the core fortune is built, many billionaires start branching out and spreading their money across other ventures.
According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos has invested in everything from space exploration through Blue Origin to a wide range of startups. He holds roughly 85% of his wealth in Amazon, with the rest a mix of cash and investments, including the Washington Post (5).
And Elon Musk has pushed beyond Tesla and SpaceX with projects spanning artificial intelligence, infrastructure and other emerging technologies.
Amancio Ortega, the 89-year-old mogul behind the fashion giant Inditex, which owns brands like Zara, has built one of the world’s largest private real-estate portfolios through his investment company Pontegadea. Ortega earns more than $400 million per year in dividends, and reinvests most of that into real estate across Europe and North America. His fortune is worth $148 billion (6).
Someone else who stands apart from the tech-heavy billionaire crowd is Warren Buffett.
The longtime chairman of Berkshire Hathaway comes in at number nine on the list, with a fortune of roughly $149 billion (7). Buffett owns stakes across dozens of businesses, from insurance giant Geico to Apple (8) and Coca-Cola (9).
His strategy is famous for focusing on long-term investing, strong businesses and compounding. The Washington Post shared one of Buffett’s well-known quotes that speaks to this philosophy where he said, “When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever (10).”
The Forbes billionaire list shows a fairly consistent formula: build wealth by owning a stake in one dominant company, then diversify into real estate, then other ventures and assets with long-term growth potential.
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The lesson isn’t necessarily to go all-in on a single stock. Instead, you can consider a savvy, measured approach.
Many of the world’s richest people built their fortunes by holding meaningful stakes in companies and allowing those investments to grow over time. For regular investors, Fidelity says that can translate to building a portfolio of quality companies, sticking with them through ups and downs, and taking advantage of potential compounding, lower transaction costs and less stress (11).
Musk, Bezos and Buffett didn’t get rich overnight. Their wealth compounded over decades as their companies expanded and markets evolved. For those investing for retirement or long-term goals, time and patience can be powerful advantages, U.S Bank says (12).
While billionaires can afford to hold a majority of their wealth in a single business, most financial experts recommend spreading investments across different sectors and asset classes to reduce risk. According to Fidelity, that diversification can include a mix of stocks, bonds, short-term investments and index funds (13).
Related: Warren Buffett’s money rules – all 8, broken down
Some billionaires balance fast-growing companies with assets that provide steady income, like real estate. Forbes shared how to use asset allocation to build a portfolio that could help achieve growth while at the same time balancing regular income from assets like bonds (14).
The Forbes billionaire list shows that their fortunes weren’t built by constantly chasing the latest hot stock or trying to time the market. There might not be a strategy to turn every investor into the next Musk or Buffett, but over time having a disciplined approach can help build meaningful wealth.
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Forbes (1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14); The Globe and Mail (8); Investopedia (9); The Washington Post (10); Fidelity (11); U.S. Bank (12); Fidelity (13)
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