wealthanalysis

Forbes recalculated the wealth of the richest billionaires to add back in what they gave to charity. Here’s who moved up the ranks.
The Current Top 5
The planet's five richest people are worth nearly $1.8 trillion combined--in part because they have not given away much of their wealth.
Net worths are from Forbes' annual World's Billionaires list as of March 1, 2026

Estimated % of Net Worth Given to Charitable Recipients: 0.9%
Elon Musk is the planet’s richest person by far, worth $839 billion as of Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list. He also ranks among the least philanthropic billionaires. Sure, Musk has transferred $8.5 billion of Tesla stock to his charitable foundations (1% of his net worth)—but nearly all of it is still sitting there idle. Only an estimated $500 million, or 0.06% of Musk’s vast fortune, has ever been disbursed to those in need.
His lack of giving raises a question: What would our billionaires ranking look like if the world’s most generous people—such as Warren Buffett (who has donated more than half of his Berkshire Hathaway stock so far) and Bill Gates (who has moved, alongside his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, more than $60 billion into the Gates Foundation)—had never donated a dollar to charity? To find the answer, we adjusted the net worths of the planet’s most generous billionaires, assuming they kept any shares they’ve given away and that cash gifts were instead invested at market rates of return.
Musk, by the simple virtue of being so much richer than everyone else, still holds the No. 1 spot when measured by True Net Worth. But he loses serious ground to his more charitable contemporaries. Gates has given away an estimated 731 million shares of Microsoft. If he had instead held onto the stock, which has soared nearly sevenfold since the Gates Foundation launched in 2000, and if he kept all his cash donations for himself, he would be four times richer than he is today—and would rank as the world’s second-richest person, instead of No. 19. Buffett would similarly leap into the top five, from No. 9 to No. 3, if he never parted with any of his Berkshire Hathaway shares, which have risen by 700% since he started donating major blocks of them in 2006.
Others would jump even more ranks up the billionaires list—including MacKenzie Scott, who climbs 58 rungs when adding back her immense charitable giving, to No. 26. Meanwhile, her ex-husband Jeff Bezos, who has given far less to charity, drops out of the planet’s top five in our rerank.
1. ELon Musk
ADJUSTED NET WORTH: $858 bil (+$19 bil from current net worth)
GIVING FOCUS: STEM, health
Musk made nearly all of his $8.5 billion of Tesla stock donations to his Musk Foundation during the 13 months through December 2024. Those tax-deductible gifts likely helped reduce the amount he owed the IRS after selling $39 billion of Tesla stock around that time, mostly to finance his $44 billion Twitter acquisition. The Musk Foundation is still sitting on much of that money, failing in several years to pay out even 5% of its assets annually as required by federal law. The foundation has transferred at least $600 million to another foundation Musk set up in 2022, called The X Foundation, with a stated mission to fund a new STEM-focused “independent primary and secondary school and, ultimately, a university” near SpaceX’s manufacturing facility in Bastrop, Texas.
2. Bill Gates
ADJUSTED NET WORTH: $464 bil (+$356 bil)
GIVING FOCUS: Health, poverty alleviation
Gates and his billionaire ex-wife Melinda French Gates have poured $60 billion into the Gates Foundation since its founding in 2000, including Microsoft stock that would be worth an estimated $287 billion today. Counting those shares, and other cash gifts he has made, adds more wealth to his fortune than any other billionaire besides Musk has amassed, even in True Net Worth terms. Gates donated $12.5 billion to women’s empowerment groups set up by French Gates, after she resigned from their Gates Foundation in 2024. In May, he announced that the Gates Foundation will spend $200 billion and shut down by 2045. Bill and Melinda famously teamed up with Warren Buffett in 2010 to found the Giving Pledge, encouraging signers to publicly commit to donating the bulk of their fortunes to charity. In March, billionaire Peter Thiel told the New York Times he’s been counseling billionaires not to participate or to remove their names.
3. Warren Buffett
ADJUSTED NET WORTH: $363 bil (+$214 bil)
GIVING FOCUS: Health, poverty alleviation
In 2006, the legendary investor announced he would give away nearly all of his fortune. In the two decades since, he has donated more than 278,000 class A shares of his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway—worth some $200 billion if he still held them. The stock has mainly gone to the Gates Foundation, three charities run by Buffett’s three children and a foundation named for his late wife. His will stipulates that virtually all of what’s left when he dies must be given away within ten years.
4. Larry Page
ADJUSTED NET WORTH: $284 bil (+$27 bil)
GIVING FOCUS: Climate change, health
The Google cofounder has stuffed stock into his Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation that would be worth more than $23 billion today if he still held it. The organization, which is named for his father, is sitting on more than $7 billion in assets after doling out nearly $2 billion, almost entirely through opaque donor-advised funds that don’t have minimum distribution requirements or report how much they have actually given to those in need,
5. Sergey Brin
ADJUSTED NET WORTH: $278 bil (+$41 bil)
GIVING FOCUS: Parkinson’s, climate change
Brin has moved an estimated 131 million shares of Google parent-company Alphabet into charitable vehicles, including his Sergey Brin Foundation. Some $5 billion has already gone out the door, including more than $2 billion to support research into Parkinson’s disease, which his late mother had. He also gave $345 million to climate change nonprofits last year and is taking on autism in his latest effort to direct most of his giving to conditions affecting the central nervous system.
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