Hundreds Of CA Billionaires Make New List Of World's Richest: Here Are The Wealthiest

In the Golden State, you don't have to travel far to find out where the other half live.

California has the highest concentration of billionaires than any other U.S. state, with many concentrated in the Silicon Valley, the Bay Area and clusters of Los Angeles and Orange counties. According to Forbes, there are more than 200 billionaires who call California home.

Elon Musk, whose fortune has soared to an unprecedented $839 billion, remains at the top of the hierarchy of The Richest People in the World. Musk built his wealth in California but relocated to Texas, citing his frustration with California's taxes and regulations among other complaints. Similarly, Sergy Brin has reportedly been make moves to distances his wealth from California as a potential billionaire's tax looms on the November ballot.

Both wealth and membership in the exclusive billaionaire's club hit all-time highs in 2026, underscoring the intensifying concentration of global economic power among the ultra‑rich, Forbes said.

The Top 20 richest California‑associated billionaires in 2026 are:

• Larry Page: Alphabet — $257 billion, Palo Alto (but recently reported to be relocating)
  • Page co-founded Google in 1998 with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin. He remained CEO until 2001. He also stepped down as CEO of Google parent company, Alphabet, but remains a board member and controlling shareholder.
• Sergey Brin: Alphabet — $237 billion, has historically lived in CA (but recently reported to be relocating)
  • Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page at Stanford in 1998 and remains a board member and controlling shareholder of Google's parent company, Alphabet.
• Mark Zuckerberg: Meta —$222 billion,Palo Alto
  • This household billionaire name got his start when he was 19-years-old after co-founding Facebook — known as Meta. Today, Zuckerberg has promised to give away 99 percent of his Meta stake over his lifetime.
• Larry Ellison: Oracle — $190 billion, Woodside
  • Ellison is chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder of software giant Oracle, of which he owns 40 percent. In 2012, he bought nearly all of the Hawaii island of Lanai for $300 million.
• Jensen Huang : Nvidia —$154 billion, Los Altos
  • Huang cofounded graphics-chip maker Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its CEO and president ever since. He owns roughly 3 percent of Nvidia, which he took public in 1999.
• Henry Samueli: Semiconductors —$30.8 billion, Newport Beach
  • Samueli is the co-founder and chairman of chipmaker Broadcom, which he started with fellow billionaire Henry Nicholas in 1991.
• Peter Thiel: Palantir / Investments —$28.4 billion, multiple CA residences
  • Paypal co-founder Thiel remains a general partner of venture capital firm Founders Fund, where he is involved in firm strategy and weighs in on its large investments.
• John Doerr: VC (Kleiner Perkins) —$19.8 billion, Woodside
  • Doerr is chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins after joing the firm in the '80s. He famously led Kleiner into Google in 1999 and invested $12.5 million, and was also an early investor in Amazon, DoorDash, Slack and more.
• Edwin Chen: Surge AI — $18 billion
  • Edwin Chen is the CEO of Surge AI, which he founded in 2020 to help companies label data to train AI.
• David Sun: Kingston Tech —$17.4 billion, Irvine
  • Sun co-founded and helps run Kingston Technology, which makes storage and memory products, as COO from a cubicle on the sales floor.
• John Tu: Kingston Tech — $17.4 billion, Rolling Hills
  • CEO of Kingston Technology with longtime partner David Sun, Tu launched a computer memory business out of a garage and sold it to now defunct PC maker AST a few years later.
• Jan Koum: WhatsApp —$17.1 billion, Atherton
  • Koum was the original co-founder of WhatsApp in 2009, which currently reigns as the world's biggest messaging service.
• Chris Larsen: Ripple — $12 billion, San Francisco
  • Larsen co-founded Ripple in 2012 to facilitate international payments for banks using blockchain technology. He stepped down as CEO in 2016 but remains executive chairman.
• Dustin Moskovitz: Facebook — $10.3 billion San Francisco
  • Moskovitz got his start when he helped launch Facebook in 2004 with then-roommate Mark Zuckerberg from their Harvard dorm. He also co-founded Asana, a workflow software company.
• Marc Benioff: Salesforce —$8 billion, San Francisco
  • Benioff co-founded Salesforce, a cloud computing software, in 1999 and is an angel investor in dozens of tech startups.
• Brian Chesky: Airbnb —$9.5 billion, San Francisco
  • Chesky co-founded home rental company Airbnb, where he serves as the CEO. He owns roughly 14 percent of Airbnb and presently lives on Airbnb full-time, moving to a different city or town every few weeks.
• Brian Armstrong: Coinbase —$8.4 billion San Francisco
• Armstrong is the chief executive of Coinbase Global, which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. He owns about 19 percent of Coinebase's shares.
• Joe Gebbia: Airbnb —$8.2 billion, San Francisco
  • Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb and Samara, a company that develops prefabricated homes to generate rental income, was appointed U.S. Chief Design Officer in August 2025.
• Steven Spielberg: Filmmaking —$7.1 billion, Los Angeles
  • Spielberg became a household name after directing films like "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park," and has since earned three Academy Awards for films that have grossed more than $10 billion worldwide.
• George Lucas: Filmmaking —$5.2, Los Angeles and Marin Count
  • Lucas, known for creating the "Star Wars" franchise, has largely retired from filmmaking since he sold his Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for $4.1 billion in stock and cash. He founded Lucasfilm in 1971 and built his fortune through his movies and their merchandise.

U.S. billionaires dominate the ranking, with 989 people on the list, followed by China (including Hong Kong) with 610, and India in third place with 229 billionaires. Overall, billionaires from 80 countries and territories made the list. Self‑made entrepreneurs account for about 67 percent of the roster, though a large share of wealth is still inherited.

Behind Musk, whose fortune was fueled by gains in Tesla, SpaceX and associated tech ventures, are other U.S. tech magnates: Google co‑founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin occupy the second and third spots with estimated net worths of $257 billion and $237 billion, respectively, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($224 billion) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($222 billion).

A prominent theme in this year’s list is the explosive rise of wealth tied to artificial intelligence. At least 86 members of the so‑called “centibillionaire club” (those worth $100 billion or more) owe their fortunes in significant part to AI enterprises. Forty‑two of these individuals became billionaires for the first time in 2026, reflecting how rapid innovation and investment in AI are reshaping wealth creation globally.

The new cohort of billionaires includes a record 35 under-30 billionaires, including newcomers Surya Midha, Brendan Foody, and Adarsh Hiremath, the trio behind AI recruiting startup Mercor, based in San Francisco. The youngest self-made billionaires ever to make the list, they are each 22 years old, and worth $2.2 billion — or, as Forbes put it, “$100 million for every year they’ve been alive.”

Women remain underrepresented on the billionaire list, accounting for only 14 percent of all billionaires — a slight increase from the previous year. Among them, Alice Walton remains the richest woman in the world, with an estimated net worth of $134 billion.