A centibillionaire is someone whose personal net worth exceeds $100 billion. The prefix “centi” means one hundred, so a centibillionaire has at least one hundred billion dollars. As of early 2026, roughly 20 people in the world have crossed this threshold, up from just one person less than a decade ago.
How the Term Originated
The word entered mainstream use in the late 2010s as a handful of tech founders saw their fortunes surge past the 12-figure mark. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, became the first centibillionaire when the Forbes Billionaires list published in March 2018 pegged his net worth at $112 billion. Before that milestone, no individual had publicly been valued at $100 billion or more. Guinness World Records formally recognized Bezos as the first person to surpass the threshold.
By 2020, five people had reached centibillionaire status, and NPR noted the soaring stock market as the primary driver. Since then the club has roughly quadrupled in size, fueled largely by gains in technology stocks, luxury goods, and cryptocurrency.
Who Qualifies Today
Forbes tracked 20 individuals with 12-figure fortunes as of March 2026. The list spans technology, luxury retail, telecom, and crypto, but tech dominates. A few names illustrate the range:
- Elon Musk tops the list at $839 billion, driven by his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
- Larry Ellison holds a fortune of roughly $190 billion tied to Oracle, after briefly crossing $400 billion in late 2025.
- Bernard Arnault and family sit at $171 billion, built on the LVMH luxury empire.
- Bill Gates remains on the list at $108 billion, rooted in Microsoft wealth that has since been diversified through investments and philanthropy.
- Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and family hold $100 billion as heirs to the L’Oréal fortune, making her the wealthiest woman in the world.
Other members include Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Michael Dell (Dell Technologies), Changpeng Zhao (Binance), and Carlos Slim Helú (Mexican telecom). The common thread is that nearly all of them hold enormous ownership stakes in publicly traded or high-growth private companies. Their net worth rises and falls with stock prices, which is why someone like Ellison can swing by hundreds of billions of dollars in a matter of months.
Why the Number Keeps Growing
A decade ago, zero people were centibillionaires. Now there are 20. Several forces explain the acceleration. Stock markets have delivered outsized returns to technology companies, and founders who kept large ownership stakes rode those gains directly. Musk, for example, owns about 13% of Tesla. When the stock doubles, so does his paper wealth. The same dynamic applies to Mark Zuckerberg’s 13.5% stake in Meta, Jeff Bezos’s roughly 9.6% of Amazon, and Jensen Huang’s position in Nvidia.
Private markets play a role too. SpaceX is not publicly traded, yet its rising private valuation adds tens of billions to Musk’s total. Cryptocurrency created a new path entirely: Changpeng Zhao’s wealth is tied to Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, a company that barely existed a decade ago.
Paper Wealth vs. Spendable Cash
It is worth understanding what $100 billion actually means in practice. Centibillionaires do not have that money sitting in a bank account. Their fortunes are overwhelmingly tied to company shares, real estate, and diversified investments. Selling a large block of stock would push the price down and trigger significant tax obligations, so the liquid cash available to any centibillionaire is a fraction of the headline number.
That said, the ultra-wealthy can borrow against their stock holdings at low interest rates, giving them access to enormous spending power without selling shares or realizing taxable gains. This “buy, borrow, die” strategy is a key reason centibillionaires can fund lavish lifestyles, acquire companies, and make philanthropic pledges while their reported income (and tax bill) stays relatively modest.
The Road to Trillionaire Status
The next milestone after centibillionaire is trillionaire, someone worth $1,000 billion. No one has reached it yet, but the conversation is no longer hypothetical. Some projections suggest there could be as many as five trillionaires by 2035. Economists generally expect the first to come from the technology sector, given that eight of the ten richest people in the world built their wealth there.
Musk is the most obvious candidate. At $839 billion, he would need roughly a 20% increase in his combined holdings to cross the line. That could happen in a single strong year for Tesla and SpaceX, or it could take much longer if markets pull back. Bezos and Zuckerberg are further from the threshold but still within striking distance over a decade-long horizon, given the size of the companies they helped build.