The world’s richest people saw their fortunes soar on Wednesday after news of the US-Iran ceasefire sparked a relief rally in the stock market.
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The top 10 people on the Bloomberg Billionaires list collectively gained $52 billion in wealth as the value of their stocks surged. The 20 richest people on the planet added $90 billion to their combined wealth, thanks to the broad-based market rally which lifted all three major US stock exchanges by more than 2.5% on Wednesday.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg led the list of gainers with an almost $13 billion wealth increase in a single day. Shares of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp’s parent company jumped 6.5% as buzz over its new AI model, Muse Spark, combined with wider market relief.
Zuckerberg was followed by LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault with a nearly $10 billion gain, then Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who added roughly $9 billion and $8 billion to their respective net worths.
Other big gainers included Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara-owner Inditex, whose fortune rose by about $7 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos added close to $7 billion, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell gained $5 billion, and the three living children of Walmart founder Sam Walton notched gains of about $4 billion each.
Elon Musk was the only person in the top 50 on Bloomberg’s list to register a wealth decline on Wednesday. The world’s richest man saw his fortune dip by around $2 billion to $623 billion as Tesla stock dropped 1%.
However, many of the world’s richest people remained in the red for this year as AI jitters and geopolitical fears have pulled down stocks.
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison is down about $56 billion this year, to $192 billion; Arnault’s fortune has shrunk by $43 billion to $165 billion; and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has seen a $35 billion wealth decline to $133 billion.
Zuckerberg and Bezos are down about $16 billion and $11 billion, respectively, to $217 billion and $243 billion.
Instead of the usual suspects, this year’s biggest gainers are David Sun and John Tu. The cofounders and 50-50 owners of Kingston Technology, a leading maker of computer drives and memory modules, have both grown an estimated $22 billion richer in 2026 on the back of strong demand from AI companies for their products.
Other big gainers include Robert Pera, the founder and CEO of Ubiquiti and the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team, who has gained about $20 billion this year.
Telecoms mogul Carlos Slim and financier Jeff Yass are up about $18 billion, Dell is around $17 billion in the green, and the Walton siblings have gained around $14 billion each.
Stocks rallied on Wednesday on hopes that President Donald Trump’s deal with Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping channel for the global energy sector.
Its virtual closure over the past five weeks or so has disrupted oil-and-gas flows across the globe, lighting a fire under energy prices and reigniting fears of inflation and recession.
