Palo Alto Residents, Entrepreneur Make Forbes List of Top 100 Billionaires

Tech titans love Palo Alto, choosing to start businesses here or live here, and this year’s annual Forbes List of Billionaires has several Palo Alto ties in the Top 100.

Residents include:

16. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder

19. Larry Page, Google founder

45. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs

Another local connection is Elon Musk, founder of Palo Alto-based Tesla, who is tied for the No. 100 spot on the list.

Quietly underlying this list is Stanford University, which nurtures geniuses and the ideas they hatch.

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· Forbes Ranks Laguna Beach Man Among Nation’s Richest

The magazine says there are now 1,826 billionaires worldwide with a combined net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion a year ago.

There aren’t any surprises at the top of the Americans on the billionaire heap: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison are the leaders.

Forbes, which has been compiling the list since 1986, says the rankings show entrepreneurship is alive and well: 1,191 members of the list are self-made billionaires, while only 230 inherited their fortunes.

--Deb Belt (Patch Staff) contributed to this story