The world’s 500 richest people added a record $2.2 trillion to their collective fortunes this year, as booming markets in everything from equities to cryptocurrencies to precious metals sent the value of their holdings soaring, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The gains, which brought their combined net worth to $11.9 trillion, were turbocharged by Donald Trump’s election victory in late 2024, and were only briefly derailed by tariff fears in April, when plunging markets caused the biggest one-day wealth wipeout since the pandemic.

Big Tech led the charge as artificial-intelligence euphoria continued to bolster US mega-cap stocks. About a quarter of all the gains recorded by Bloomberg’s wealth index came from just eight individuals, including Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, Alphabet Inc. co-founder Larry Page and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos.

Notably, though, that represented a smaller contribution than last year, when the same eight billionaires made up 43 per cent of the total gains, the report by Bloomberg News stated.

When the year began, Musk was indisputably the boldface name on the list of the world’s richest. He became a major political player for the first time after donating nearly $300 million to Trump’s reelection campaign, and spent much of early 2025 in Washington, DC, spearheading the administration’s cost-cutting efforts.

However, it was Ellison, not Musk, who ended up stealing the show. Fuelled by a massive run-up in Oracle shares as the longtime cloud infrastructure company ramped up spending on AI, he briefly overtook Musk as the world’s richest man in September.

Although Oracle shares have since slumped about 40 per cent from their peak, Ellison ended the year making headlines for his involvement in the bid by Paramount Skydance Corp. — run by his son David Ellison — to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.

Gains weren’t confined to the United States. While the S&P 500 Index posted an annual increase of 17 per cent through December 30, it was outperformed by a 22 per cent gain in the UK’s FTSE 100 and a 29 per cent rise in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng.

Other asset classes did even better: Precious metals recorded one of their best years in decades amid a rush to safe havens, while copper and rare earths also emerged as commodities of key geopolitical importance, with major holders including Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart and Chile’s Luksic family adding billions to their fortunes.

Before a recent selloff, crypto was also on track to beat equity returns for the year: Bitcoin surged to all-time highs following Trump’s election win and extended those gains as the administration approved a series of crypto-friendly policies.

However, a massive slide starting in October saw it wipe out all of those gains and then some, battering the wealth of billionaires including the Winklevoss twins, Changpeng Zhao and Michael Saylor.

Some of the biggest winners included Larry Ellison, with a net worth of $249.8 billion and yearly gain of $57.7 billion; Elon Musk worth $622.7 billion and yearly gain of $190.3 billion as well as Gina Reinhart, who had a net worth of $37.7 billion and gain of $12.6 billion, among others. (AriseNews TV)

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