The world’s billionaire population has grown at its fastest rate in five years, with the elite club now holding combined wealth of more than $15 trillion amid the AI gold rush, new data shows.
In a third successive year of snowballing billionaire wealth, the population grew by 287 in 2025, an increase of 8.2 per cent – the strongest growth in five years – according to the latest billionaire census from wealth intelligence firm Altrata.
Their combined wealth grew by 12.8 per cent in 2025, compared with population growth of 5.6 per cent and wealth growth of 10.3 per cent a year earlier. Overall, billionaire wealth has more than doubled over the past decade, with the population growing almost 60 per cent in that period.
Some 3,795 people now have 10-figure fortunes. The average billionaire is worth $4 billion, though the median fortune is closer to $2 billion, reflecting how a small group of ‘superbillionaires’ dominates the wealth pot.
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Just 29 of this cohort, each worth more than $50 billion and averaging around $140 billion, hold combined wealth of $4.1 trillion – amounting to 27.2 per cent of all billionaire wealth.
This figure is up from 16.3 per cent in 2023 and almost four times the share in 2017. The number of people in this $50 billion-plus coterie has jumped from 18 to 29 in the same two-year period to 2025.
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Of the UK’s 128 billionaires, 79 reside in London, the world’s fourth-largest billionaire city. Despite wider billionaire growth, the UK gained no new billionaires in 2025, a flat performance Altrata attributes to ‘changes to the UK’s tax regime and divergent equity-market returns’.
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Almost 60 per cent of the capital’s billionaires were born overseas. The US remains the top spot for billionaires, with 1,265 holding almost $6.7 trillion between them – a 44 per cent share of global billionaire wealth. Germany recorded the fastest growth among the top 15 billionaire countries, with a 20.1 per cent rise.
AI rush driving billionaire boom
The AI investment boom has been the ‘single most important driver’ of global billionaire wealth creation since 2023, according to Altrata.
Billionaires with stakes in companies investing substantially in AI have seen stronger growth, particularly those exposed to public and private firms benefiting from the boom. Across the 150 listed companies it tracks, those making substantial investments in AI showed market-capitalisation growth 23 per cent higher than those that did not over 2024-2025.
‘Another part of the AI investment boom is where you’ve got these very high valuations of global and typically tech businesses that have just fuelled this growth in some of those superbillionaires,’ Maya Imberg, Altrata’s senior director and head of thought leadership, told Spear’s.
There is ‘more of a risk of volatility’ around AI-linked valuations going forward, Imberg cautioned, noting that any fall in company valuations would impact billionaire wealth.
And soaring valuations and the growth in billionaires’ on-paper fortunes aren’t necessarily reflected in their spending, as much of that wealth remains tied up in the businesses they own.
‘A lot of that wealth is really in their business, so they’re not necessarily taking out their wealth and spending it,’ Imberg said.
Over the longer term, though, the census recorded rapid growth in passion-asset holdings among the super-rich. The value of passion-asset holdings per billionaire grew by an average 13.3 per cent a year over the past decade.
‘That’s very fast growth,’ Imberg said. ‘You have a demographic that’s always willing to buy and continue to spend.’
These assets include art, sports teams, fine wine, jewellery, watches, luxury cars, yachts and private jets.
Imberg described billionaire ownership of sports teams as an ‘increasing phenomenon’, with more than 200 of the world’s billionaires now holding a direct stake in a sports team or franchise. Altrata says billionaire sports ownership is shifting ‘from passion-driven engagement to a more investment-led portfolio allocation’.
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Private jets are more common than yachts among the billionaire class, with 15 per cent of billionaires owning a private jet, nearly three times the share who own a luxury yacht.
While yacht ownership is more popular in particular regions, jets have the practical advantage of ‘working almost anywhere’, Imberg said.
Who will inherit record billionaire wealth?
The longer-term opportunity for luxury, however, increasingly rests with those set to inherit that wealth. Some 91.4 per cent of the world’s billionaires are aged over 50, and more than half of that subset are over 70.
Altrata identifies 4,990 direct beneficiaries set to inherit a sizeable share of the $6.6 trillion expected to be passed on over the next decade. These are 3,620 adult children and 1,370 spouses, 90 per cent of whom are women. However, siblings, grandchildren, friends, associates, charities and educational institutions are also in line to benefit.
The average age of adult children expected to inherit is 48, while spouses average 66. Almost a quarter of the adult children already work alongside their billionaire parent in the family business, showing the importance of business succession in the impending wealth transfer.
‘Luxury companies need to think about who’s going to be getting that wealth and what kind of relationship they have with those individuals,’ Imberg said.
