Top Richest Men in the World in 2026, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and the Money Behind the Wealthy Watching the top richest men in the world in 2026 isn’t just curiosity, it’s a fast way to see where capital is moving. For investors, these rankings can hint at which industries are gaining ground and which are cooling off, even if the names at the top stay familiar, like Elon Musk (the CEO of SpaceX, born in South Africa but an American citizen educated at the University of Pennsylvania) and Bill Gates. Net worth is a simple idea, it’s what someone owns minus what they owe. The tricky part is that much of that value is paper wealth tied to stocks and private company stakes, not cash sitting in a bank. Liquid wealth is the part that can be turned into cash quickly, but for the ultra-wealthy, it’s often a smaller slice than headlines suggest. That’s why the list can change quickly. Stock prices jump, private company values get revised, and currency moves can change the dollar value of global ...