By Abby Schultz

Elon Musk may have fallen out of favor with President Donald Trump but he has retained the No. 1 spot as the wealthiest person in the world through the first half of this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk, who spent nearly $300 million backing Trump's election and saw his wealth surge $26.5 billion in one day on the coattails of Trump's Nov. 6 election, ended 2024 with an estimated net worth of $432 billion.

As of June 30, the Tesla CEO's wealth stood at $363 billion, a $69 billion drop, as Tesla -- his primary source of wealth -- continues to be rattled by Musk's politics. Today, the electric-car maker's shares are tumbling on news of Musk's plans to create a new political party.

Musk's falling wealth puts him in the minority among the top 10 billionaires in the world, who posted modest gains through the first half of the year, according to the Bloomberg index. The exceptions included LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton CEO Bernard Arnault, who lost $27 billion and slipped to No. 10 from No. 5 at the start of the year amid a slide in LVMH shares, and Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin, who lost $10 billion, slipping one notch to No. 9.

Collectively, the fortunes of the 10 wealthiest people in the world rose by about $38 billion. That's a turnabout from the first quarter when rocky stock markets contributed to a total $227 billion drop in net worth for the top 10. Only Warren Buffett and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates saw gains.

By the end of the first half of the year, Meta Platforms founder Mark Zuckerberg jumped ahead of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos to rank No. 2 with a net worth of $260 billion, up $53 billion for the year. Bezos gained $1 billion in net worth in the first half for a total of $240 billion. His fortune may have been affected by a planned $5.4 billion Amazon stock sale scheduled for Friday, June 27, according to an SEC filing.

Zuckerberg's wealth is mostly from a 13% stake in Meta, Bloomberg said. The stock reached a high of $738 a share on June 30, up 26% for the year. Bezos' wealth depends on his 8.6% stake in Amazon, which he uses to fund Blue Origin, a space exploration company, Bloomberg said. He also owns the Washington Post.

Shares of Amazon ended the first half relatively flat, at $219.4 a share from $220 a share, but were somewhat volatile throughout the period.

The ranking order of the top billionaires may have changed in the first half of the year, but the same 10 individuals led the pack. That is likely not to be the case going forward. On July 3, Bloomberg chopped about $50 billion from Gates' net worth because of his announced plans to give away $200 billion of his current and future wealth over the next 20 years. As of July 6, Gates net worth as calculated by Bloomberg was $124 billion, ranking him No. 12 among the world's billionaires. That's down from his No. 8 rank at the end of last year and No. 5 at the end of the first half.

As a result, Gates' former colleague -- one-time Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer -- ranks far above Gates -- and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang edged into the top group. As of July 6, Ballmer took Gates' No. 5 spot among the top billionaires with a net worth of $172 billion; Huang ranked No. 10 with a net worth $139 billion.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is based on publicly available information and represents paper wealth -- not cash in the bank. It also isn't always possible to accurately calculate for stakes in privately held companies. Bloomberg, for instance, determines how much Musk's ownership stakes in two of his companies -- brain-chip start-up Neuralink, and tunneling firm The Boring Co. -- through news reports, PitchBook data, and "values taken from their most recent funding rounds."

As Barron's has reported , these valuations can change, and in some calculations, can be discounted since they don't easily convert to cash.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 07, 2025 15:12 ET (19:12 GMT)

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