PRESENTED BYBy Forbes StaffFour years ago, Forbes launched its Iconoclast summit to convene a forum for the world’s most influential leaders in finance, industry, entertainment and media and technology. The idea was to gather and probe the world’s leading minds for direction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that shook the planet. While the pandemic seems far in the rearview mirror, 2026 brings a new set of imminent challenges and opportunities, from the War in Iran to the onslaught of artificial intelligence. Forbes' new Iconoclast 50 list recognizes leaders in finance, business, technology, media, entertainment and philanthropy that are changing the game in real time, disrupting their industries and challenging the status quo. Think of it as the VIP of the Forbes Universe: the billionaire founders, CEOs, investors, entertainers, athletes and philanthropists whose decisions reverberate across markets, industries and cultures worldwide. Collectively, this year's honorees represent more than $2.5 trillion in wealth.For our inaugural Iconoclast 50 the criteria were straightforward: each list maker must have already earned a place on a Forbes ranking – from the Forbes 400, to the Midas List and The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes. In other words, we relied on the deep reporting and research going into Forbes pre-existing rankings and lists as our first screen. The second screen focused on recency: Iconoclast 50 members needed to have made a meaningful impact, deployed an innovative or contrarian strategy, or disrupted their marketplace or industry within the past two years.You will recognize most of the Iconoclast 50. Elon Musk, the world’s richest, with $824 billion, may soon become the world’s first trillionaire. However, you may not recognize his chief operating officer at Space X, Gwynne Shotwell, also a billionaire, who is the hands-on leader sweating the details. Ever hear of Liang Wenfeng? He’s the 41-year-old founder of DeepSeek, the China-based AI lab threatening U.S. based leaders like OpenAI with its low-cost large learning model. Wenfeng is worth $11.5 billion. We also have LA Dodger phenom Shohei Ohtani and Chris Hohn the UK-based hedge fund manager who has reaped $40 billion in gains in the last three years, outpacing even legends like Ken Griffin, who also makes our 2026 Iconoclast 50.Ten honorees are women, and roughly one-quarter are immigrants. Their educational backgrounds are equally varied: while many attended elite institutions such as Harvard, Wharton and Stanford, 13 never completed college and two left school before earning a high school diploma.Most are universally admired, but others, like Iconoclast 50 members President Donald J. Trump, JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame and Palantir’s Alex Karp are deeply polarizing. All have challenged conventional wisdom and changed the arenas in which they operate. taylor hill/getty imagesBill Ackman, 60Founder, Pershing Square Capital ManagementNet worth: $9 billionA decade ago, Ackman first told Forbes he was going to turn Texas-based real estate company Howard Hughes HoldingS into his own version of Berkshire Hathaway. In 2025, his $20 billion (assets) Pershing Square added another $900 million to its investment in Howard Hughes, doubling Ackman's stake to nearly 50%. Howard Hughes then purchased property and casualty insurer Vantage in a $2 billion deal, giving Ackman access to investable float. If this sounds similar to Buffett’s Berkshire model, it's no coincidence. Now, after a $5 billion offering raising permanent capital, retail investors have direct access to Ackman's hedge fund which will manage investments for Howard Hughes.View Profile | Recent CoverageCody Pickens for ForbesSam Altman, 41 CEO, OpenAINet worth: $3.5 billionThe CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, the $20 billion (2025 revs) juggernaut behind ChatGPT, has become the poster boy for the AI revolution. Altman is famous for his eagerness to commercialize AI quickly, consequences be damned. A few consequences: A bunch of OpenAI’s execs quit to start Anthropic and he got sued by Elon Musk for converting OpenAI, originally a non-profit, into a for-profit affair.View Profile | Recent CoverageAnthropicDario Amodei, 43CEO, AnthropicNet worth: $7 billionSafety first. That’s the message that Anthropic CEO Amodei wants everyone to hear. He left OpenAI in late 2020 with six other key researchers and executives to build Claude, a safety-centered AI model that prioritizes human wellbeing. So far, the billionaire is sticking to his principles: He got in a very public spat with the Pentagon in February after refusing to allow Anthropic’s AI to power fully autonomous lethal weapons and he continues to refuse to remove Anthropic’s contractual bans on mass domestic surveillance.View Profile | Recent CoverageWolfgang Wilde for ForbesPaolo Ardoino, 41CEO, TetherNet worth: $38 billionArdoino has spent the past two years transforming Tether from crypto’s dominant stablecoin issuer into one of the planet’s most unconventional conglomerates. Under his leadership, USDT’s market capitalization has more than doubled to $189 billion, while the company’s annual profits have surpassed $10 billion. The growing cash pile has propelled Tether into the ranks of the world’s largest holders of U.S. Treasuries, gold and bitcoin—and funded its rapid expansion far beyond stablecoins. Tether is now in bitcoin mining, AI, education and venture investments, and has already deployed more than $10 billion across data centers, satellites, telecom and agriculture. In 2025, the company also launched USAT, its new U.S.-compliant stablecoin.View Profile | Recent CoverageCody Pickens for ForbesBrian Armstrong, 43Cofounder and CEO, CoinbaseNet worth: $9.1 billionThe chief of the largest U.S. crypto exchange has made AI coding mandatory across the company, while his developers built x402, a pioneering open payment standard that lets AI agents access and pay for APIs, data and cloud services, with support from companies including Amazon Web Services, Anthropic and Google. At the same time, Coinbase has been expanding beyond crypto into stock trading, prediction markets, tokenized assets and derivatives. Last May, it became the first crypto-native company to join the S&P 500. Armstrong is also making a big bet outside finance. In 2025, his longevity startup New Limit, which aims to restore human cells to a youthful state, raised nearly $175 million at a $1.6 billion valuation.View Profile | Recent CoverageElizabeth Conley/Getty ImageLaura & John Arnold, 52 & 53Cofounders, Laura and John Arnold FoundationNet worth: $2.8 billionThe hugely successful energy trader and onetime Enron executive, Arnold shocked Wall Street in 2012 when he closed his hedge fund and began to focus on philanthropy with his wife Laura. The couple has already donated more than $2 billion, or 42% of their fortune, making them one of the most generous couples by percentage given away. Just last year, their foundation handed out 900 grants to everything from criminal justice reform to North Carolina’s community college system.View Profile | Recent CoverageRodin Eckenroth/Getty ImagesConnie & Steve Ballmer, 64 & 70Cofounders, The Ballmer GroupNet worth: $132.9 billionA dozen years after retiring from Microsoft, Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie continue to make an impact through philanthropy. The couple has donated an estimated $6.5 billion, including $1.5 billion in 2025. Largely focused on improving economic mobility for American children and their families, the couple pledged $170 million in November to a pre-K program serving low-income kids in Washington State. Steve also funds his ten-year-old USAFacts, a nonpartisan civic initiative meant to improve the nation’s democracy, while Connie donated $80 million in April to NPR.View Profile | Recent CoverageMichael Prince for ForbesWarren Buffett, 95Chairman, Berkshire HathawayNet worth: $140 billionAfter 60 years at the helm of the most successful investing conglomerate in history, the world’s greatest living investor and cofounder of the Giving Pledge stepped down and showed Wall Street that succession need not be fodder for HBO-style dramas.View Profile | Recent CoverageJim McIsaac/Getty ImagesSteve Cohen, 69Founder, Point72 Asset ManagementNet worth: $23 billionWhile most great hedge funds live and die based on the moves of a single genius trader, Cohen is transitioning $50 billion Point72 Asset Management to a more institutionalized, multi-manager approach and has created an executive committee to run operations, risk and technology. The New York Mets owner is also partnering with Hard Rock International to transform the Citi Field area in Queens into an $8.1 billion entertainment district including a casino and live event venue.View Profile | Recent CoverageMaarten De Boer/Getty ImagesRyan Coogler, 40Cofounder, Proximity MediaNet worth: $25 millionRaised in Oakland and Richmond, California, by a mother who worked as a community organizer and a father who was a juvenile probation counselor, Coogler has become one of Hollywood’s most influential filmmakers, directing movies that have generated more than $2 billion worldwide. In March, Coogler won the 2026 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Sinners, which received a record 16 nominations. Earlier in his career, Coogler directed Fruitvale Station, Creed, and Black Panther, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide.View Profile | Recent CoverageDimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesTim Cook, 65CEO, AppleNet worth: $3 billionAfter 15 years at the helm and increasing Apple’s market cap from $350 billion to $4.5 trillion, Steve Jobs’ chosen CEO, Tim Cook, offers the rest of ego-driven tech a master class in how to execute a stable and seamless succession. Apple’s unparalleled ecosystem of 2.5 billion personal devices ensures that it will be a gatekeeper in the AI revolution.View Profile | Recent CoverageMichael Prince for ForbesSusan & Michael Dell, 60 & 61Cofounders, The Michael & Susan Dell FoundationNet worth: $203.5 billionIn one of the largest wealth-building pledges in U.S. history, the tech pioneer and his wife Susan pledged $6.25 billion in December to help seed investment accounts for millions of American children through so-called “Trump Accounts.” Five months later, the couple announced a $750 million gift to the University of Texas at Austin to help build a new AI-focused medical center and research campus. The donation pushed the couple’s total giving to UT Austin to more than $1 billion.View Profile | Recent CoverageJamel Toppin for ForbesLarry Ellison, 81Cofounder, Chairman & CTO, OracleNet worth: $271.5 billionEllison pulled off one of the most unlikely reinventions, transforming a company best known for sleepy database software into a central player in the AI boom. In January 2025, he stood at the White House with President Trump and OpenAI's Sam Altman to announce a $500 billion plan to build AI data centers across America. Last September, Oracle's stock jumped 40% in a single day after ChatGPT-maker OpenAI signed a roughly $300 billion deal to rent computing power from Oracle, briefly making him the richest person in the world. He also helped finance his son's $8 billion takeover of Paramount Global through Skydance last August, and went even bigger by backing Paramount Skydance's $110 billion winning bid for Warner Brothers.View Profile | Recent CoverageCapital OneRichard Fairbank, 75Cofounder, Chairman & CEO, Capital OneNet worth: $1.6 billionAfter more than three decades as Capital One’s CEO, Fairbank closed two transformative deals in a frenzied 12-month span. In May 2025, he completed Capital One’s $35 billion takeover of Discover Financial Services, a merger that created America’s largest credit card lender and gave the bank its own payment network. Fairbank now owns the cards and the road they run on, a lucrative setup almost no other U.S. bank can match. Then in April, he paid $5.2 billion for fast-growing fintech startup Brex, gaining a new technology stack to push deeper into corporate cards and small business banking.View Profile | Recent CoverageRichard Phibbs/Trunk ArchiveLarry Fink, 73Cofounder, Chairman & CEO, BlackRockNet worth: $1.3 billionSpending more than $27 billion in the last two years to buy four companies, Fink has made bold bets to turn the world's biggest money manager into something even bigger. The acquisitions—including private credit firm HPS Investment Partners and infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners—give BlackRock control over a corner of finance where companies borrow money and build assets like power plants, far from the public stock market. BlackRock hit a record $14 trillion in assets in 2025.View Profile | Recent CoverageChona Kasinger/BloombergMelinda French Gates, 61Founder, Pivotal Philanthropies FoundationNet worth: $29.8 billion“Issues affecting women and girls are chronically and unconscionably underfunded,” French Gates told Forbes in January, pointing out that organizations dedicated to them receive only 2% of U.S. philanthropic dollars. After years of giving away billions alongside her ex-husband Bill Gates, she is making her own mark with her Pivotal Philanthropies. She’s already donated at least $540 million to nonprofits focused on women and girls and has plenty more to dole out thanks to $12.5 billion her ex-husband donated to Pivotal after she left the Gates Foundation in 2024.View Profile | Recent CoverageSebastian Kim/AugustKen Griffin, 57Founder & CEO, Citadel LLCNet worth: $50 billionGriffin runs the most profitable hedge fund of all time, earning in excess of $90 billion in gains since its inception in 1990. Griffin, who has recently been feuding with NYC Mayor Mamdani over singling him out in a luxury real estate tax announcement, claims his relocating $68 billion (assets) Citadel to Miami will produce more jobs in the city over the next decade. It has also encouraged a Wall Street exodus to the sunny city. View Profile | Recent CoverageDan Kitwood/Getty ImagesChris Hohn, 59Founder, The Children’s Investment FundNet worth: $11.8 billionLondon’s $77 billion (assets) TCI Fund Management has been the world’s best-performing large hedge fund for the last two years, posting a jaw-dropping $18.9 billion in gains in 2025 alone, according to LCH Investments. Over more than three decades, Hohn has built a reputation as one of Europe’s most feared activist investors, known for bruising boardroom battles, holding management to brutal standards, and publicly shaming companies, like Google and Unilever, that underperform or ignore climate risk. View Profile | Recent CoverageJoe Pugliese/AugustJensen Huang , 63CEO, NvidiaNet worth: $186.8 billionIt’s the same story in every gold rush: Only a few prospectors strike it rich, but the people selling the miners denim jeans and pickaxes really rake it in. Virtually all AI companies on the planet use microchips made by Huang’s company Nvidia, which became the most valuable company in history in late 2025 when it surpassed a market capitalization of $5 trillion. The company is now building what Huang describes as “AI factories:” industrial systems designed to manufacture intelligence at scale.View Profile | Recent Coveragebenedikt von loebell/newscomAlex Karp, 58Cofounder & CEO, Palantir TechnologiesNet worth: $14.7 billion“We were the freak show,” Karp has said about spending 20 years getting dismissed as a fringe defense contractor before becoming one of Wall Street's most-watched companies. Palantir makes software that helps companies and governments find patterns in huge amounts of data—the kind of tool the CIA uses to track terrorists and Wendy's uses to manage french-fry inventory. The stock rose roughly 135% in 2025 as the company’s revenue grew 56% to $4.5 billion. Thanks in part to the war in Iran and use of its Maven software, first-quarter 2026 revenue jumped 85% from a year earlier to $1.63 billion, with U.S. business customer sales up 133%.View Profile | Recent Coveragejustin sullivan/getty imagesBeyoncé Knowles-Carter, 44MusicianNet worth: $1 billionQueen Bey added another jewel to her crown in December, when she became the fifth musician to reach billionaire status. Her turn to country music helped fuel the milestone, with Cowboy Carter winning Album of the Year at the Grammys and Beyoncé becoming the first Black woman to win for Best Country Album. Her victory lap continued on the road, where the Cowboy Carter Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of 2025 with about $450 million in ticket and merchandise sales, following her Renaissance World Tour, which grossed nearly $600 million in 2023.View Profile | Recent CoverageAlexander Karnyukhin for ForbesLuana Lopes Lara, 30Cofounder, KalshiNet worth: $2.6 billionLuana Lopes Lara and cofounder Tarek Mansour are shaking up the playing field in financial markets and gaming, with their startup Kalshi. In prediction markets, potential trading is limited only by imagination. A former professional ballerina in Austria, she later studied computer science and mathematics before launching Kalshi with Mansour. Since winning full CFTC approval in late 2020, Kalshi has grown into the largest prediction-market platform in the U.S., valued at more than $22 billion and handling more than $5 billion in weekly trading volume.View Profile | Recent CoverageKyle Grillot/BloombergPalmer Luckey, 33Founder, Oculus VR, AndurilNet worth: $5 billionLuckey founded virtual reality startup Oculus VR and sold it to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. His new AI-fueled company Anduril has changed weapons production to focus on cheaper, mass-produced autonomous systems. In May, Anduril raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, fueled by the Trump administration’s investment in the U.S. military.View Profile | Recent CoverageGuerin Blask for ForbesTarek Mansour, 30Cofounder, KalshiNet worth: $2.6 billionLebanon-raised Mansour, along with cofounder Luana Lopes Lara, is running a $22 billion startup that is threatening to disrupt major institutions ranging from the NYSE to DraftKings. A former Goldman Sachs and Citadel analyst, Mansour launched Kalshi with Lopes Lara after graduating from MIT.View Profile | Recent CoverageTim Tadder for ForbesBenito Antonio Martínez Ocasio aka "Bad Bunny", 32MusicianBad Bunny entered Super Bowl LX week facing political attacks over a Puerto Rican artist performing in Spanish during America’s biggest broadcast. He left with one of the most-watched halftime shows ever, drawing over 4 billion views in 24 hours across all platforms. The performance capped a year in which Debí Tirar Más Fotos became the first Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, while his sold-out Puerto Rico residency, staged partly to avoid putting U.S. fans at risk of ICE enforcement, helped drive an estimated $66 million in 2025 earnings. View Profile | Recent CoverageStefanie Keenan/Getty Images; Noah BergerDustin Moskovitz & Cari Tuna, 42 & 40Cofounders, Good VenturesNet worth: $9.9 billionThe Silicon Valley power couple – Moskovitz cofounded Facebook and is Asana’s chairman while Tuna is a former Wall Street Journal reporter – have become leading figures in philanthropy circles, known for their data-driven philanthropy and focus on underfunded causes such as lead poisoning prevention and artificial intelligence safety research. Their Coefficient Giving recently expanded its reach, securing more than $200 million in commitments from fellow billionaires including Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison and Larry Page’s wife Lucinda Southworth.View Profile | Recent CoveragePatrick Pleul/Getty ImagesElon Musk, 54CEO, Tesla, SpaceX and XAINet worth: $829.5 billionThe world’s richest person (net worth: $800 billion) is also one of its most reliably iconoclastic. He thinks differently – about everything. Before Musk, electric cars were a novelty. He made hauling stuff to space a reliable business. StarLink made satellite Internet a reality for underserved or war-torn countries. Then there is Optmus, Tesla’s humanoid AI-powered robot, set to enter production later this year. The financial engineering has been good too: In March of last year, he merged xAI with his social media outfit X, valuing his AI firm at $80 billion. That number skyrocketed to $250 billion in January as chatbot Grok grew in popularity. SpaceX is due to go public in June, which could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.View Profile | Recent CoverageChona Kasinger/BloombergSatya Nadella , 58CEO, MicrosoftNet worth: $1.3 billionLike Cook, Nadella is a hired-hand CEO. His 12-year tenure has likewise been transformative, having pushed the company to the forefront of cloud computing and, more recently, AI. Starting in 2019, Nadella spearheaded billions in investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI and has integrated AI into most of its products and platforms. Unlike other software makers threatened by AI, Microsoft is on the cutting edge. Its market cap hovers around $3 trillion, up tenfold since Nadella took over. Thanks to more than $13 billion invested in OpenAI, an estimated 27% stake should afford the Seattle company a $200 billion-plus windfall when the AI leader IPOs.View Profile Alexander Karnyukhin for ForbesMichael Novogratz, 61Founder, Galaxy Digital HoldingsNet worth: $7.1 billionA Wall Street veteran, Novogratz is one of the few entrepreneurs who have built a serious business at the intersection of crypto and AI. The former Goldman Sachs trader and Fortress cofounder made a contrarian bet in 2022, when Galaxy, then still chiefly a crypto firm, paid $65 million for a distressed bitcoin mine in West Texas. That site has since become one of the world’s largest AI data center campuses, valued at more than $20 billion. Novogratz is deftly positioning his Nasdaq-listed Galaxy as both crypto’s premier investment banker and as a datacenter giant. View Profile | Recent CoverageChristian Petersen/Getty ImagesShohei Ohtani, 31AthleteAt 31, Shohei Ohtani is running out of ways to make baseball history. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way phenom won his second straight World Series ring last fall and a fourth MVP, becoming only the second MLB player to win four times, behind only Barry Bonds. His dominance was summed up in Game Three of the 2025 World Series, going 4-for-4 with two homers and two doubles before the Toronto Blue Jays intentionally walked him four times. Off the field, Ohtani is set to rake in $127 million in 2026 (before taxes and agents’ fees), the most ever for a baseball player. View Profile Axelle Bauer Griffin/Getty ImagesTrey Parker, 56Co-creator, South ParkNet worth: $1.2 billionParker, along with his creative partner Matt Stone, created South Park, the long-running animated comedy that debuted on Comedy Central in 1997 and became one of the most successful franchises in television history. Through their wholly owned production company, Park County, the pair have maintained full ownership of their entertainment empire. This year, Parker and Stone finalized a five-year, $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount+, making them Hollywood’s highest-paid showrunners. Recent CoverageEthan Pines for ForbesSundar Pichai, 53CEO, AlphabetNet worth: $1.3 billionAfter two years of backlash for letting ChatGPT eat Google's lunch, Pichai has silenced critics. Google's Gemini AI assistant has surged in popularity, while Google Search's new AI Mode hit 1 billion monthly users in one year. In January, Apple announced it would power future versions of Siri using Google's AI, sending Alphabet's stock market value above $4 trillion for the first time. Pichai is spending up to $190 billion this year to keep that lead—more than double last year's investment.View Profile guerin blask for forbesAssaf Rappaport, 42Cofounder & CEO, WizNet worth: $2.3 billionThe Israeli founder of cybersecurity firm Wiz pulled off one of the boldest gambles in tech: he turned down Google's $23 billion buyout offer in 2024, said his company was worth more, then sold it to Google a year later for $32 billion. The deal closed in March, making Wiz the biggest acquisition in Google's history. Wiz makes software that protects companies' data stored in the cloud—the digital equivalent of a security guard for files. Rappaport's company reached an estimated $700 million in annual subscription revenue at the time of the acquisition announcement in 2025. View Profile | Recent CoverageJustin Goff/Getty ImagesJ.K. Rowling, 60Author, Harry Potter SeriesNet worth: $1.2 billionRowling is the author behind the Harry Potter wizarding world, which has sold more than 600 million books worldwide, spawning 11 films with global box office earnings of more than $9.5 billion. Last May, Forbes named her a billionaire (again) as she expanded her magical empire to Universal's Epic Universe theme park, and HBO’s new Harry Potter series, which premieres in December 2026. Once a single mother on welfare and a survivor of domestic violence, Rowling has traveled a phenomenal distance and given back along the way, creating the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund in 2025 for the protection of women’s “sex-based rights.” View Profile | Recent CoverageJamel Toppin for ForbesMichael Saylor, 61Founder, Strategy Inc.Net worth: $5.2 billionAfter courting bond investors and traders for years with convertibles and equity, Bitcoin’s biggest buyer Saylor has convinced an army of income investors that his perpetual preferred stock “Stretch,” which pays 11.5% monthly, is somehow comparable to a money market fund. More than $10 billion has been raised through these preferreds to buy bitcoin in the last year. Never mind that the dividends for the preferreds are being paid by Strategy equity offerings.View Profile | Recent CoverageGuerin Blask for ForbesSteve Schwarzman, 79Cofounder, Chairman & CEO, BlackstoneNet worth: $39 billionBlackstone has poured roughly $150 billion into data centers and related projects that run AI models, anchored by its 2021 takeover of data center operator QTS. The bet has positioned Blackstone strategically in the AI arms race with QTS the single biggest driver of Blackstone's investment gains in 2025. Innovations like perpetual funds have put Blackstone at the forefront of PE’s retail push. Blackstone closed 2025 with $1.3 trillion under management and its best year ever for new investor money, attracting a record $240 billion in client funds.View Profile | Recent CoverageJorg Carstensen/Getty ImagesMacKenzie Scott, 56Founder, Yield GivingNet worth: $33.1 billionA few generations back, being a major philanthropist meant setting up an organization that would exist in perpetuity (think the Ford Foundations) or establishing a university like Carnegie Mellon. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett sped things up with their Giving Pledge, asking billionaire signers to give away their money during their lifetimes. But it took MacKenzie Scott to put it on warp speed. The ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has given away $26.4 billion in less than seven years. Last year she gave away an estimated $7.2 billion, the most by any individual worldwide since Forbes started keeping track in 2012. Scott (who is still worth $30.9 billion) has now given away more than 75% of the Amazon shares she received in her 2019 divorce.View Profile | Recent CoverageAngel Garcia/BloombergGwynne Shotwell, 62President & COO, SpaceXNet worth: $1.3 billionShotwell has been the company's day-to-day boss for nearly 20 years while Elon Musk grabs the headlines. In February 2026, SpaceX merged with Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, making the combined business the world's most valuable private company. Shotwell now oversees rockets, satellites and AI software, all heading into a public debut in June that could value the company at $1.75 trillion or more. She currently has 18 of SpaceX's massive Starship rockets being built in Texas right now, aiming to land astronauts on the moon by 2028.View Profile | Recent CoverageJamel Toppin for ForbesMasa Son, 68CEO, SoftBankNet worth: $88.1 billionSon is turning SoftBank into one of the main checkbooks behind the AI buildout. In November 2025, SoftBank sold its entire Nvidia stake for nearly $6 billion to help fund a much larger OpenAI bet, with plans to invest $30 billion between April and October this year. Son is also backing Stargate, the $500 billion project with OpenAI, Oracle and MGX to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. SoftBank posted more than $31 billion in net profit in 2025, the highest ever for a Japanese company.View Profile | Recent CoverageOn Kopaloff/Getty ImagesMatt Stone, 55Co-creator, South ParkNet worth: $1.2 billionStone and creative partner Trey Parker are the co-creators of South Park. Through Park County, the duo has retained full ownership of their expanding entertainment empire. A new five-year, $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount+, cements the duo’s status as Hollywood’s highest-paid showrunners. The pair’s visual effects AI venture Deep Voodoo is expected to release a film with Kendrick Lamar in 2026.Recent CoverageFrazer Harrison/Getty ImagesTaylor Swift, 36MusicianNet worth: $2 billionOne of the most commercially successful songwriters of all time, Swift changed the music industry in 2020 when she leveraged her star power to re-record most of her discography. As a result, her royalties flowed straight into her pocket and she inspired fellow artists to take ownership of their music. In 2024, Swift reached billionaire status thanks to The Eras Tour, which became the highest-grossing concert tour in history with revenue of $2.2 billion. She used the cash to buy back her original masters for an estimated $360 million. By March 2026, her net worth doubled to $2 billion, making her the richest female musician in history. View Profile | Recent CoverageGuerin Blask for ForbesVlad Tenev, 39Cofounder, RobinhoodNet worth: $4.4 billionHaving disrupted the discount brokerage business with zero commission trading, Tenev is remaking Robinhood into a diversified financial super app for Generation Z and beyond. Robinhood now offers advanced trading tools, AI features, banking, credit, wealth products, prediction markets and tokenized assets. In 2025, Robinhood hit a record $4.5 billion in revenue, with 11 business lines each generating more than $100 million on an annualized basis. Tenev has also pushed the platform into the next frontier of automation, allowing AI agents to trade and make credit-card purchases. The former math Ph.D. candidate has a second AI bet, Harmonic, the mathematical superintelligence startup he cofounded in 2023, which reached a $1.45 billion valuation after a Series C round in November 2025.View Profile | Recent CoverageMauricio Santana/Getty ImagesAbel Tesfaye aka “The Weeknd”, 36MusicianThe highest paid musician of 2025, The Weeknd raked in an estimated $298 million this past year, largely thanks to the sale of his music catalog to Lyric Capital in a deal reported to be worth $1 billion, from which he pocketed an estimated $200 million after fees. His After Hours Til Dawn Tour, the highest-grossing tour by a male solo artist, is set to wrap up in Asia later this year after selling more than 7.5 million tickets across 153 shows so far. View Profile | Recent CoverageJamel Toppin for ForbesDonald Trump, 79Real estate, President of the United StatesNet worth: $6.1 billionLove him or hate him, there's no denying Trump’s deep contrarian streak. His second term as U.S. President has been a ceaseless assault on conventional wisdom, whether that is imposing tariffs in the face of inflation, threatening to invade Greenland, or using the U.S. military to blow up speed boats in the Pacific. One thing is certain: He has been using his office to enrich himself. Thanks largely to his cryptocurrency ventures and the eagerness of foreign real estate developers to do business with a U.S. president, his fortune has surged to $6.5 billion, the highest Forbes has pegged him at since we started tracking him in 1982.View Profile | Recent CoverageGabriel Rinaldi for ForbesDavid Velez, 44Cofounder & CEO, NubankNet worth: $12.9 billionThe Colombian-born founder built Latin America's biggest digital bank by betting Brazilians would rather manage money on their phones than wait in line at fortress-like bank branches. Nubank now serves 135 million customers—nearly 60% of Brazil's population—and made more profit per dollar of equity last year than the country's largest traditional bank. In January, U.S. regulators gave Velez approval to open a national bank in America, the next step in what he calls Nubank's "Act Three": taking the company global.View Profile | Recent Coveragevcg/getty imagesLiang Wenfeng, 41Founder & CEO, DeepSeekNet worth: $11.5 billionLiang Wenfeng turned DeepSeek from a lesser-known Chinese AI lab into one of Silicon Valley’s biggest headaches. In January 2025, the Hangzhou-based company released R1, an open-source model that claimed to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost. Investors who had bet that the AI boom would require tons of expensive chips were spooked, wiping out nearly $600 billion from Nvidia's market cap. Wenfeng, who also founded High-Flyer Capital Management, is now reportedly in talks to raise DeepSeek's first venture round at a $45 billion valuation, making the startup one of China’s highest-profile AI challengers.View Profile | Recent CoverageEthan Pines for ForbesDana White, 56CEO & President, UFCNet worth: $600 millionWhite has grown UFC from the undisputed MMA leader to one of the most influential and politically connected properties in sports. Last August, the company announced a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance, putting all U.S. fights on Paramount+ while ditching the pay-per-view model that defined the sport for decades. And in June, UFC is headed to the White House lawn for a live fight card tied to America’s 250th anniversary, putting White deeper inside a Trump-aligned media orbit. At $1.1 billion in revenue a year, UFC will now earn nearly as much in domestic media rights as MLB. Recent CoverageSIGJeff Yass, 67Cofounder, Susquehanna International GroupNet worth: $67.4 billionAmong traders, poker aficionado Yass is the top dog on Forbes billionaires list not just because his secretive quantitative firm, with some $850 billion in assets, continues to outperform, but also because he has an uncanny ability to see around corners. Prediction markets have been his biggest recent move as SIG’s dedicated market-making operation is the chief liquidity agent for Kalshi. SIG also provides the operating juice for another financial rocket, Robinhood and owns a significant stake in TikTok’s U.S. business via ByteDance.View Profile | Recent CoverageGilles SabrieZhang Yiming, 43Cofounder, ByteDanceNet worth: $69.3 billionIn January 2026, ByteDance subsidiary TikTok, the 2-billion-user global social media phenom, successfully navigated its biggest threat yet—a politically motivated deal that shifted TikTok’s U.S. business to Trump-approved investors, while ByteDance is expected to retain a minority stake. Though Zhang officially stepped down as ByteDance chairman in 2021, he still plays a big role in the company’s AI strategy, including Doubao, China’s most popular AI assistant.View Profile | Recent CoverageGuerin Blask for ForbesMark Zuckerberg, 42CEO, MetaNet worth: $209.4 billionZuckerberg continues to sharpen Meta’s commitment to AI and cut the flab. The company laid off 8,000 people over the past 12 months, 10% of its workforce, while Zuckerberg simultaneously committed to spending $130 billion on AI initiatives. The Meta-powered Ray-Ban sunglasses pioneered the use of neural wristbands that let users interact with computers through subtle hand movements, becoming one of the first commercially successful AI wearables. Under his leadership, Meta has become a central player in generative AI by aggressively developing and open-sourcing its Llama models.View Profile | Recent CoverageCREDITSEdited by: Maneet Ahuja, Matthew SchifrinDeputy Editor: Katie BishopAdditional Editing: Luisa Kroll, Michael Noer, Ali Jackson-Jolley, Michael Solomon, Andrea Murphy, Katharine Schwab, John Paczkowski, Jeff Kauflin, Nina Bambysheva, Kirk Ogunrinde, Asia Alexander, Alicia Park, Sofia Cherchio, Martina Di LicosaEditorial Operations: Justin Conklin, Francesca WaltonCreative Director: Alicia Hallett-ChanDirector of Photography: Robyn SelmanDesign Director: Fernando CapetoDesign Lead: Philip SmithEditorial Design: Yunjia Yuan, Macy SinreichPhoto Research: Gail ToivanenMORE FROM FORBESForbesHow Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son, Michael Saylor And Other Billionaires Are Rewriting Their LegaciesBy Martina Di LicosaForbesHow These Bold Women Are Reimagining LeadershipBy Alicia ParkForbesHow These Business Mavericks Are Rethinking PhilanthropyBy Kirk Ogunrinde