If last week’s market tumble has you worried about your 401(k) or Roth IRA investments, you’re in good company—even the ultrawealthy are feeling the pain. Six out of the 10 top richest people in the world have experienced wealth declines between $30 billion and $60 billion this calendar year, totaling over $255 billion.
Jeff Bezos’s net worth is down $30.7 billion since January, whereas Mark Zuckerberg has faced a decline of $46.3 billion in wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The sharpest drop belongs to Larry Ellison, whose wealth has fallen $59.6 billion to $188 billion—well off his peak of $400 billion last September when he surpassed Elon Musk as the world’s richest person.
For billionaires, the losses are closely tied to the market. Shares of Amazon are down nearly 11% this year. Meta has fallen about 18%, and Oracle is off nearly 30%. Every member of the Magnificent Seven—including Alphabet, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, and Nvidia—is now down double digits from its 52-week high.
A mix of forces is driving the downturn, from geopolitical tensions (including conflict with Iran) to growing skepticism about whether the AI-fueled stock rally can live up to high expectations. Last week’s selloff alone pushed the S&P 500 down 3% and dragged the Dow into correction territory, compounding what has already been a shaky year for equities.
Still, not every billionaire is in the red. Elon Musk, Michael Dell, and members of the Walton family have been growing their wealth this year, underscoring how uneven the market’s impact can be—even at the very top.
Billionaire wealth is still at a record high—and experts say giving it away might not be as easy as it seems
Even with recent market turbulence, global billionaire wealth is still at record highs. Total billionaire wealth hit $18.3 trillion in 2025—with the year bringing a 16% surge, three times faster than the past five-year average, according to Oxfam. Since 2020, billionaire wealth has increased 81%.
Much of that growth has been concreted at the very top. The 10 richest Americans—mostly tech founders like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg—added $698 billion to their net worths between November 2024 and the same month in 2025.
That dynamic reflects how deeply the ultrawealthy are tied to financial markets. The richest 0.1% of U.S. households own roughly a quarter of all equities, according to the Federal Reserve. By contrast, the bottom 50% of Americans own just 1.1% of stocks.
The widening gap is increasingly shaping public opinion. In 1998, just 45% of Americans supported redistributing wealth through higher taxes on the richest; by 2022, that figure has climbed to 52%, according to Gallup.
Still, not everyone buys into the backlash. Earlier this month, rapper Jay-Z, whose net worth is estimated at $2.8 billion—pushed back on the blanket criticism of billionaires.
“It’s almost like a cop-out,” he told GQ. “You get to demonize this group of folks without fixing the actual system that exists, that’s in play.”
And while many billionaires have signed the Giving Pledge, a promise to give away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills, critics argue that vast fortunes remain largely intact—and difficult to meaningfully deploy.
Liz Baker, the CEO of Greater Good Charities, said the expectation that billionaires can simply give away their wealth to solve complex global problems overlooks how challenging that process actually is.
“I wish I had a billion dollars to give away, but as somebody who’s responsible for giving away money, yeah, it’s hard, because there’s a really big responsibility that goes with that,” Baker told Fortune earlier this month.
”You can’t just go at a problem and be like, Here’s a billion dollars, figure out the problem,” Baker added. “It’s too complicated. It doesn’t work like that.”
