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Forbes released its annual World’s Billionaires List this week, and it’s the biggest one yet. The ranking now includes a record 3,428 entrepreneurs, investors, and heirs who together hold an unprecedented $20.1 trillion in wealth, up $4 trillion from last year.
The United States leads the pack with 989 billionaires, and nearly 30 of them have ties to Massachusetts.
The list offers a snapshot of global wealth as of March 1, 2026, based on stock prices and currency exchange rates at that moment in time.
This year’s class of newbies includes two iconic musicians, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Dr. Dre, the famous filmmaker James Cameron, and a tennis legend, Roger Federer.
While Elon Musk remains the richest man in the world, he is followed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta.
Here in Massachusetts, there were a few newcomers as well.
William “Bill” Chisholm joined the list after he led a group of investors to purchase the Boston Celtics in August for $6.1 billion. Although he has worked in Silicon Valley for decades, he grew up near Boston and is a lifelong Celtics fan.
Larry Culp, who moved to the Boston area after taking over as CEO of GE Aerospace in 2018, also recently joined the ranks of billionaires. He built his fortune to $1.8 billion, beginning his career at Danaher before playing an integral role in breaking up GE into three separate public companies.
Another recent addition was Andrew Bialecki, the co-founder and CEO of Klaviyo, a marketing automation software company. Worth $1.5 billion, he first launched his Boston company in 2012, becoming a billionaire for the first time in 2024.
Beth Treffeisen is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on local news, crime, and business in the New England region.
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