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The number of billionaires has fallen (but they're worth a collective $12.7 trillion)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant on March 22, 2022 near Gruenheide, Germany.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant on March 22, 2022 near Gruenheide, Germany.

There are 2,668 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes' most recent annual tally of planet Earth's super rich.

Collectively, they are worth a whopping $12.7 trillion.

But Forbes, which used stock prices and exchange rates from March 11 to calculate their net worths, said both the number of billionaires and their collective wealth has dropped since last year.

There are 87 fewer billionaires on this year's list than in 2021, and their total riches dipped by $400 billion.

"War, pandemic and sluggish markets hit the world's billionaires this year," the news outlet said.

One country impacted by these factors was Russia which has 34 fewer billionaires on the list this year.

China also saw a decline in the number of its citizens on Forbes' count, but it still has the second-highest number of billionaires in the world, trailing only the U.S.

Here are the 10 richest people in the world, according to Forbes:

1. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, $219 billion

2. Jeff Bezos, executive chair of Amazon, $171 billion

3. Bernard Arnault and his family, who oversee the luxury goods giant LVMH, $158 billion

4. Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, $129 billion

5. Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, $118 billion

6. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, $111 billion

7. Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, $107 billion

8. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, $106 billion

9. Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO, $91.4 billion

10. Mukesh Ambani, chair of Reliance Industries, $90.7 billion

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Joe Hernandez
[Copyright 2024 NPR]