Elon Musk (left), Gautam Adani (center), and Jensen Huang (right)
Reuters
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter, a weekly guide for high-net-worth investors and consumers by Robert Frank. sign up Get future editions delivered straight to your inbox.
On September 29, 1916, newspapers across the nation announced the birth of the world’s first billionaire, a milestone of wealth once thought unreachable.
“Standard Oil Stock at $2,014 Makes Company President a Billionaire,” headed the New York Times headline, adding that the company’s soaring stock price “will almost certainly make its founder and largest stockholder, John D. Rockefeller, a billionaire.”
More than a century has passed since the first American billionaire (in dollar terms) was born, but the question of who will be the first to reach the trillionaire mark remains intriguing. At least six people have achieved this feat, most recently Berkshire HathawayIt surpassed the $1 trillion mark just before Warren Buffett’s 94th birthday. NVIDIA Last year it hit 13 figures and now stands at $2.6 trillion.
But what about individuals? According to a new report from Informa Connect Academy, which predicts trillionaire status based on average annual growth rates of wealth: Tesla CEO Elon Musk is likely to become the company’s first trillionaire.
Musk is currently the world’s richest person, with a fortune of $251 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and Connect Academy projects that Musk will become a trillionaire in 2027, assuming his fortune continues to grow at an average annual rate of 110%.
The second trillionaire to be named will be Gautam Adani, founder of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, who will become a trillionaire by 2028 if he maintains his recent annual growth rate of 123%, the report said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose fortune has soared from $3 billion to more than $90 billion in five years, will become a trillionaire by 2028, according to the report. His fortune would have to keep growing at an average annual rate of 112%. Nvidia shares more than tripled last year and are already up about 115% this year.
Coming in fourth on the list is Prajogo Pangestu, founder of Indonesian energy and mining conglomerate Barito Pacific, who the report predicts could become a trillionaire by 2028.
Rounding out the top five are LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault is currently the world’s third-richest person with a fortune of just under $200 billion, and the report predicts that the luxury goods mogul will be a trillionaire by 2030. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Some of the billionaires who could soon reach the four-figure club aren’t even in the top 10. Jeff Bezos, currently the second-richest person in the world with a fortune of $200 billion, ranks 12th and won’t become a trillionaire until 2036, according to Bloomberg. Google The founders will also have to wait 12 years to become trillionaires, but artificial intelligence could accelerate their rise.
To be sure, wealth watchers have been predicting the arrival of the first trillionaire for years, and the stock prices of Tesla, Nvidia, and LVMH may not soar as much over the next five years as they have over the past five.
But more than 100 years after the first billionaire was born, it’s entirely possible that the first trillionaire will be born in the next decade.
