It was a banner year for Africa’s billionaires, whose cumulative wealth surpassed $100 billion for the first time ever. Africa’s 22 billionaires saw their fortunes rise to a total of $105 billion, up from $82.4 billion and 20 billionaires last year.



It’s no small feat to generate this level of wealth on the continent, where political uncertainty, currency crises and challenging consumer markets are routine. Last May, Zimbabwe ditched the country’s Zimbabwe dollar in favor of the ZiG, a gold-backed currency aimed at curbing the nation’s hyperinflation problem. Still, the growth for Africa’s wealthiest is in line with global equity markets, which rose 22% in the 12 months ended February 2025, according to MSCI.



Aliko Dangote of Nigeria tops the list for the 14th year in a row with an estimated net worth of $23.9 billion, up from $13.9 billion a year ago. The big jump in his fortune is primarily due Forbes adding the value of his refinery, which opened last year on the outskirts of Lagos after long delays. The refinery struggled for years to take off due to regulatory disputes and other setbacks, but started refining a small amount of oil in early 2024 and is slated to reach full capacity this month. That has allowed Nigeria–a major oil-producing country–to begin exporting some refined petroleum products.



“This is a very, very big relief,” Dangote, 67,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2025/02/17/africas-richest-man-doubled-his-fortune-on-a-massive---and-risky---23-billion-bet/">told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in February</a>. Dangote, now one of the world’s 100 richest people, believes that his latest project is “a pivotal step in ensuring that Africa has the capacity to refine its own crude oil, thereby creating wealth and prosperity for its vast population.”



The second richest African is South African luxury goods tycoon Johann Rupert, whose fortune rose 39% to $14 billion, the second-largest gain among the billionaires. Rupert has held onto the No. 2 spot since 2022. Another billionaire whose fortune grew more than 30%: Femi Otedola of Nigeria (No. 18, $1.5 billion), chairman of listed power generation firm Geregu Power Plc. Shares of Geregu surged some 40% in the past year following a jump in revenue and profits.



Two African billionaires who made the list in the past and then fell off are back on again. Anas Sefrioui, a Moroccan housing billionaire, returns to the ranking as shares of real estate firm Douja Promotion Groupe Addoha, which he controls, more than doubled in the past year as the company reported increased home sales. Jannie Mouton, founder of a South African investment firm, appears once again following a 59% jump in the share price of Capitec Bank Holdings, one of Mouton’s most significant holdings.



Among the four whose fortunes slipped since last year: Zimbabwean telecommunications magnate Strive Masiyiwa, whose fortune was caught in the crosshairs of the country’s currency change.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates his net worth at $1.2 billion, down about 33% from the 2024 list.



South Africa had the largest number of billionaires this year, with seven, followed by four from Nigeria and four from Egypt. The list also includes three billionaires from Morocco, one from Algeria (Isaad Rebrab), one from Tanzania (Mohammed Dewiji) and one (Masiyiwa) from Zimbabwe.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-methodology">METHODOLOGY</h3>



Our list tracks the wealth of African billionaires who reside in Africa or have their primary business there, thus excluding Sudanese-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim, who is a U.K. citizen; and South African Nathan Kirsh, who operates out of London and has his business in the U.S. and U.K. Net worths were calculated using stock prices and currency exchange rates from the close of business on March 7, 2025.



Net worth changes were measured from&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;2024 African Billionaires list, published in January 2024. To value privately held businesses, we start with estimates of revenues or profits and apply prevailing price-to-sale or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies. Some list members grow richer or poorer within weeks or days–of our measurement date. For daily updated net worths, see&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#55188f883d78">Real-Time Billionaires List</a>.

974×548

Africa’s Billionaires Are Richer Than Ever

In an era where global markets often dictate local fortunes, Nigeria’s ultra-wealthy have built empires rooted in the country’s soil, forging industries that not only create wealth but also provide critical homegrown solutions to the country’s most pressing challenges.



Nigeria’s billionaires are rewriting the rules of business in Africa.



In an economy battered by currency swings, regulatory shakeups, and infrastructure gaps, Nigeria’s billionaire class is not just surviving—they are thriving. The country’s wealthiest moguls have seen their collective fortune balloon—one of the largest wealth jumps in Nigeria’s modern history.



Unlike previous decades, where fortunes were largely tethered to oil booms and government patronage, today’s billionaires have diversified—cementing their influence across industries like energy, power, telecommunications and infrastructure. And yet, they all share one trait: a drive to solve Nigerian problems with Nigerian solutions.



At the top of the list remains Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, whose fortune now stands at $23.9 billion. If the past decade saw him dominate cement and sugar, this decade confirms his place in global energy. His $23 billion Dangote Refinery, finally operational after years of delays, has transformed Nigeria’s refining capacity overnight, slashing dependence on imported fuel. It’s a move not just of business acumen but of nation-building—a direct response to Nigeria’s longstanding energy crisis.



Making an emphatic comeback on the Forbes’ Africa billionaires’ list last year after a seven-year hiatus, Femi Otedola not only reclaimed his billionaire status but asserted himself as a dominant force in power generation. With a fortune of $1.5 billion, Otedola’s transition from oil to electricity through Geregu Power has proven prescient. Nigeria’s push for a privatized power sector has given his investments a renewed edge, and his resurgence signals a broader shift in the country’s energy priorities.



For Mike Adenuga, the billionaire behind Globacom and Conoil, the past year has been a mixed bag, reflecting the headwinds in telecom and oil. However, his legacy as a telecom pioneer remains unchallenged—Globacom continues to expand its reach, solidifying its role as a key player in Nigeria’s digital economy.



For Abdulsamad Rabiu, the founder of BUA Group, 2025 has been a year of consolidation. His cement and sugar empire remains formidable, and with Nigeria’s infrastructure boom showing no signs of slowing, BUA Group’s influence is far from waning.



These billionaires are not just accumulating wealth; they are reshaping Nigeria’s economy.



Dangote’s refinery could save the country billions in foreign exchange, and Otedola’s growth signals a future where private capital drives utilities. Yet, challenges persist. The naira remains volatile, government policies shift unpredictably, and infrastructural gaps continue to plague industries. These billionaires have thrived in uncertainty before, but can they future-proof their empires?



There’s also the looming question of succession. With most of these men in their 60s, who will carry the torch? Will their children or handpicked successors step up, or will a new wave of entrepreneurs emerge to challenge them?



One thing is certain: in 2025, Nigeria’s billionaires are more than just wealthy men. They are architects of a new economic order—one where Nigerian solutions define the future of one of Africa’s biggest economies.



Aliko Dangote



Nigeria imports over 80% of its refined petroleum—or at least, it did. With 650,000 barrels per day in local refining capacity, Dangote has flipped the script.



The refinery is expected to slash Nigeria’s fuel import bill, stabilize foreign exchange reserves, and cut costs for millions of Nigerians who rely on fuel for transportation and power generation.



This has seen his net worth soar, largely fueled by the long-awaited commissioning of the Dangote Refinery—the largest petroleum refinery in Africa, positioning it to supply products across Africa. With global energy markets shifting and fuel subsidies phasing out in Nigeria, the refinery’s operational launch could not have come at a more critical time.



The refinery’s impact is already visible. In January, Nigeria’s fuel imports dropped to its lowest level in eight years, while export contracts for petroleum products have been signed with multiple African nations. Observers project that Nigeria could save $10 billion annually on petroleum products imports.



Dangote’s empire predates oil. He is the founder and chairman of Dangote Industries, which includes Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar, and Dangote Flour.



Ayo-Bankole Akintujoye, a strategy expert, says: “Dangote is the archetype of how homegrown industrialists can catalyze development, create prosperity, and position Africa competitively in the global economy.”



In February, Dangote announced a $400 million investment to double production at his Mugher cement plant in Ethiopia to 5 million metric tons per year. The plant, operational since 2015, had faced political instability, but Dangote confirmed that all loans have been repaid and profits repatriated.



In November 2024, Dangote expanded into Angola, opening a subsidiary focused on oil block acquisitions, the Lobito Refinery project, and cement production. This marks a significant push into southern Africa’s energy and construction markets, further solidifying his continental influence.



Dangote is also making moves in Nigeria’s auto industry. In 2022, he partnered with Stellantis to launch Dangote Peugeot Automobiles Nigeria (DPAN), assembling Peugeot models at a Kaduna-based factory.



“His business model of reinvestment and vertical integration has created a powerful economic multiplier effect across Africa,” Akintujoye notes to FORBES AFRICA. “From manufacturing to distribution, he has strengthened local supply chains, created jobs, and preserved foreign exchange reserves.”



With reportedly 11,000 employees in West Africa and businesses dominating cement, sugar, and now petroleum refining, Dangote’s empire continues to shape Africa’s industrial future. His ability to navigate regulatory complexities, infrastructure deficits, and capital constraints showcases why he remains the most influential business leader on the continent.



Mike Adenuga



Mike Adenuga rules connectivity and crude. With a fortune of $6.8 billion, he is Nigeria’s second-richest man. Dubbed the ‘Silent Billionaire, Adenuga lets his businesses do the talking.



His Globacom, the second-largest telecom network in Nigeria, connects over 60 million subscribers.



Nigeria has 164.9 million active telecommunications subscribers, according to December 2024 subscription sta- tistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commis- sion (NCC). Data consumption is exploding, fueled by fintech, streaming, and e-commerce. Globacom’s strategic fiber-optic expansions keep Adenuga a central figure in the digital economy, with 12.15% of the market share.



Adenuga has always played by his own rules.



His oil company, Conoil Producing, holds six oil blocks in the Niger Delta. Adenuga has significant stakes in Conoil, a publicly traded petroleum firm where he holds 74%, and Sterling Financial Holding, where he owns just under 6%. He also spearheaded the development of Glo-1, a 6,100-mile submarine internet cable linking Nigeria to Europe via Ghana and Portugal, improving broadband access in West Africa.



Industry experts consider Adenuga’s success a case study in indigenous business development.



Mayowa Adeosun, COO and Co-Founder of fintech firm Sycamore Group, underscores Adenuga’s calculated risk-taking and strategic foresight in shaping multiple African sectors.



“Adenuga’s investments in telecommunications and oil seemed prescient in hindsight, but they were made in the face of significant uncertainty and risk,” says Adeosun to FORBES AFRICA. “His ability to navigate complex regulatory environments while maintaining operational efficiency offers valuable lessons for business development across the continent.”



Adenuga’s approach has gone beyond personal wealth accumulation—his infrastructure investments have catalyzed growth across multiple industries. Globacom’s expansion, for instance, has facilitated thousands of small businesses to scale through improved connectivity, showcasing an ecosystem-driven model of wealth creation.



“We observe daily how improved access to capital and financial services can activate entrepreneurial potential across market segments,” Adeosun adds.



“The blueprint established by visionaries like Adenuga demonstrates how institutional builders can create long-term value while addressing fundamental market gaps.”



Abdulsamad Rabiu



Rabiu, the founder of BUA Group, is a key force in Nigeria’s industrial sector. His cement empire is heavily tied to infrastructure spending, which has been volatile due to fiscal constraints.



Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit is estimated at $3 trillion over the next 30 years.



Cement demand will continue to rise.



BUA Group is also expanding into refining and petro-chemicals with a greenfield 200,000 barrels per day plant in Akwa Ibom of southern Nigeria, aiming to produce Euro-V fuels and Polypropylene for the domestic and regional market.



Rabiu has cemented his legacy—quite literally—through his holdings in cement production, sugar refining, and real estate. His decision to merge Obu Cement with Cement Co. of Northern Nigeria in 2020 created BUA Cement Plc, a player on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, where he holds a 98.2% stake. In the food sector, he owns 95% of BUA Foods, another publicly traded giant shaping West Africa’s agro- industrial economy.



Rabiu’s story is one of calculated risks and bold counter-cyclical investments.



His early years were shaped by his father, a businessman-man- man who left him land—an inheritance he leveraged to build an empire. In 1988, he struck out on his own, importing iron, steel, and chemicals, laying the foundation for the industrial powerhouse that BUA would become.



His approach to business defies short-term gains, favoring a long-haul vision where vertical integration and infrastructural development create ripple effects across multiple sectors. Adeosun, of fintech firm Sycamore Group, sees Rabiu’s journey as a blueprint for sustainable African entrepreneurship.



“Rabiu’s strategic investments in manufacturing weren’t obvious wins at the time,” Adeosun notes to FORBES AFRICA. “He invested when others hesitated, navigating economic volatility and complex regulations. His success wasn’t just about wealth accumulation—it was about ecosystem building.”



Femi Otedola



Few Nigerian billionaires have reinvented themselves like Otedola.



Once an oil tycoon, Otedola sold his stakes in Forte Oil to pivot into the power sector, becoming chairman of Geregu Power—pushing his fortune to $1.5 billion.



Nigeria’s grid collapses multiple times a year. Private power is now essential. His pivot from oil to power mirrors a larger privatization wave in Nigeria’s utility sector.



Otedola’s Geregu Power now supplies a significant portion of Nigeria’s electricity grid, attracting investments from the Nigerian government, China’s State Grid Corporation, and African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).



Beyond energy, Otedola has also stamped his influence in Nigeria’s financial sector. His investment in FBN Holdings, one of Nigeria’s leading banks, has been pivotal.



As the chair and significant shareholder, he played a crucial role in improving the bank’s efficiency, driving profitability and value for investors. He also holds shares in Zenith Bank.



Kayode Omosebi, Director at Lagos-based MO Africa Company, sees Otedola’s resurgence as a testament to Nigeria’s economic potential and the power of strategic foresight.



“Otedola’s return as a Forbes-listed billionaire showcases the resilience required for success in Nigeria’s evolving business landscape. His ability to think differently, persist against all odds, and strategically reposition his investments is an inspiration for young entrepreneurs. His journey highlights the vast opportunities within Nigeria’s traditional and emerging sectors,” Omosebi tells FORBES AFRICA. Otedola has homes in Lagos, Dubai, London, and Monaco.

Urban life in Lagos

Nigeria’s Billionaire Class: Homegrown Titans Redefining Wealth In 2025

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Even the world’s richest man has bad days, as Elon Musk faced a litany of headaches to start the week Monday—including the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/03/10/x-outage-thousands-report-issues-with-elon-musks-platform/">crash</a>&nbsp;of his social media site, an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/03/10/tesla-stocks-election-rally-is-all-gone-erasing-91-gain/">11-figure drop</a>&nbsp;in his net worth as his primary venture Tesla faced brutal losses, while an awkward TV interview only gave critics more fodder.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-timeline">Timeline</h2>



March 10, 8:54 a.m. EDTMusk’s Monday gets off to an immediate bad start as users on his X platform&nbsp;<a href="https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">begin</a>&nbsp;to report widespread outages, with Musk later&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/03/10/x-outage-thousands-report-issues-with-elon-musks-platform/">attributing</a>&nbsp;the crash to a “massive cyberattack” from “a large, coordinated group and/or a country” and noting the problem emanated from “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area” (cybersecurity expert Cliff Steinhauer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/03/10/x-outage-thousands-report-issues-with-elon-musks-platform/">told</a>&nbsp;Forbes it was likely too early to determine the root of the issue).



March 10, 9:42 a.m.Musk shockingly&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1899093526190698784" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">calls</a>&nbsp;veteran and retired astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a “traitor” after Kelly posted support for Ukraine following a visit to the country,&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/SenDuckworth/status/1899206544907981264" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">leading&nbsp;</a><a href="https://x.com/SenRubenGallego/status/1899206416641970357" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">a slew</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1899206461462352342" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">of Democrats—</a>including Kelly’s wife&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/GabbyGiffords/status/1899172428032463302" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Gabby Giffords</a>—and even one House Republican, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., to criticize him, with Bacon&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/mkraju/status/1899248385233690883" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">telling</a>&nbsp;CNN Musk’s accusation was “not right” and “reflects bad on the White House” (on Musk’s own platform, his “traitor” comment received only 15,000 Likes by Tuesday morning compared to over 230,000 likes for&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/SenMarkKelly/status/1899155561171558505" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Kelly’s response</a>).



March 10, 3:45 p.m.Left-leaning watchdog organization Media Matters, a longtime Musk target,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/10/nx-s1-5323844/media-matters-elon-musk-new-lawsuit" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">sues</a>&nbsp;X for bringing lawsuits against it in foreign countries as part of &#8220;a vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism,” the suit alleged.



March 10, 4 p.m.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/03/10/tesla-stocks-election-rally-is-all-gone-erasing-91-gain/">Tesla</a>, the primary source of Musk’s wealth, ends Monday trading down more than 15%, its worst daily loss since September, as the electric vehicle maker became the most notable loser of the Wall Street losses tied to shaky investor sentiment amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs—Tesla stock closed more than 10% lower than it did prior to Trump’s election, wiping out what was once a more than 90% rally, and shares declined over 50% in less than three months.



March 10, 4:30 p.m.Musk sits down with Fox Business’ “Kudlow” and does little to assuage Tesla investor angst,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/03/10/elon-musk-says-hes-running-his-companies-with-great-difficulty-as-tesla-shares-plummet/">saying</a>—in a halting way that went viral on social media— that he’s juggling his Department of Government Efficiency role with his positions at Tesla and his other companies “with great difficulty” and invokes Monty Python, adding to “always look on the bright side of life.&#8221;



March 10, 4:56 p.m.Responding to a thread on Monday being the seventh-worst day in Tesla stock’s 15-year history, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1899202765781450951" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">writes</a>, “It will be fine long-term.”



March 10, 10:13 p.m.A federal judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/03/11/federal-judge-rules-doge-must-disclose-records-about-its-operation-to-comply-with-federal-transparency-law/">rules</a>&nbsp;against DOGE for operating with “unprecedented power” and “unusual secrecy,” ordering Musk’s agency to comply with public record requests and increase its transparency.



March 10, 10:18 p.m.Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1899283682851975342" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">replies</a>&nbsp;the “antibody reaction is strong” to a post suggesting Musk “will be blamed for everything,” including the “incoming&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/03/08/are-we-suddenly-close-to-a-recession-heres-what-the-data-actually-shows/">recession</a>.”



March 11, 12:14 a.m.Musk’s boss&nbsp;Trump chimes in to support Musk after his bad Monday,&nbsp;<a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114141854575248527" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">writing</a>&nbsp;on his Truth Social site he will buy a Tesla “as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”



March 11, 8:22 a.m.Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, long one of the most outspoken voices on Wall Street in Musk’s and Tesla’s corner, publishes a critical note on Musk, saying patience is “wearing very thin” and Musk “needs to step up as Tesla CEO at this critical juncture” as there’s been “little to no sign of Musk” at any Tesla facility since Trump took office.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$22.8 billion. That’s how much Musk lost off his net worth during Tesla’s Monday nosedive, according to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/">estimates</a>. That’s more than the entire $22.7 billion fortune held by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">Forbes Valuation</h2>



Musk’s $325 billion net worth still makes him by far the wealthiest person in the world with a $110 billion lead over the next richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($215 billion net worth).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">Crucial Quote</h2>



“The Musk DOGE distractions” have “created a black cloud over Tesla&#8217;s stock” according to Ives.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tesla-stock-bounces-back-some-tuesday">Tesla Stock Bounces Back Some Tuesday</h2>



Shares of Tesla gained as much as 6% Tuesday morning, bouncing off of their lowest close since October, before settling into a 1% advance by 11 a.m. EDT, as the market broadly dropped on Trump’s&nbsp;<a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114144217763824399" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">decision</a>&nbsp;to increase tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel imports to 50%. Tesla’s 2025 losses are staggering, as its nearly 45% year-to-date decline makes it the worst-performing company listed on the S&amp;P 500, according to FactSet data.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2025/03/10/why-tesla-isnt-the-ai-powerhouse-musk-says-it-is/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ForbesWhy Tesla Isn’t The AI Powerhouse Musk Says It IsBy&nbsp;Alan Ohnsman</a>

President Trump Returns To White House From Florida

A Timeline Of Elon Musk’s Terrible 24 Hours—A Dark Day For X, Tesla And More

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/search/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/"></a>Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote broke his government’s oil monopoly by building the largest petroleum refinery in Africa. So far, only he has reaped the rewards.



<abbr>A</abbr>liko Dangote takes a deep breath,&nbsp;before reflecting on the odyssey of building Africa’s largest oil and gas refinery. “This is a very, very big relief,” says Dangote, who is speaking with&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;via video conference from an office space at the refinery. Between remarks, the tycoon waves away employees off-screen vying for his attention. “It is actually removing something off my chest,” he continues, as if speaking with his therapist. “Because nobody ever gave us the chance to prove this through.”



After 11 years, $23 billion in investment and innumerable headaches, the Dangote Refinery finally began operating last year. Located on a sprawling 6,200-acre campus in Nigeria’s Lekki Free Zone about an hour outside Lagos, the refinery processed around 350,000 barrels of crude per day (b/d) in the second half of 2024. In January, it processed 500,000 b/d. At full capacity, which is expected next month – a whopping 650,000 b/d – the Dangote Refinery will be the seventh largest refinery in the world by production and the biggest in Africa. Its adjacent petrochemical complex has an annual production capacity of 3 million metric tons of urea, making it Africa’s largest fertilizer producer.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/67afbd80ac49904e68ea108d/web-Dangote-8x10-cover-02-2025/1960x0.jpg?height=888&amp;width=711&amp;fit=bounds" alt="web-Dangote-8x10-cover-02-2025"/></figure></div>


Dangote’s refinery is already impacting global energy markets. Imports of gasoline into Nigeria are on pace for an eight-year low, affecting the European refiners that traditionally sold to Nigeria, according to energy intelligence firm Vortexa. And thanks to the refinery, Nigeria has become a net exporter of jet fuel, naphtha (a solvent used in varnishes, laundry soaps, cleaning fluids) and fuel oil,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/112224-feature-refiners-brace-for-margin-pain-as-nigerias-dangote-refinery-scales-up" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">according to</a>&nbsp;S&amp;P Global.



With his project coming to fruition, Dangote is now worth an estimated $23.8 billion—almost double what he was worth last year. (He insists he&#8217;s even richer). Already Africa’s wealthiest person, the 67-year-old Nigerian moves back into the ranks of the top 100 richest since 2018, according to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;Real-Time Billionaires List.



It seemed not long ago that Dangote’s refinery might never come on line. In late 2023, some observers expressed doubt the plant would even work. Even once operations began early last year, Dangote struggled to source crude oil from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria’s all-important state-owned oil company, threatening the project’s financial viability.



Dangote says the refinery is part of a larger mission: He wants to make Nigeria, one of the world’s largest producers of crude, into a producer of refined petroleum products to allow it to compete with European refineries and supply gasoline to Nigerians. Prior attempts by the Nigerian government to build and operate large-scale refineries ended in failure, leaving Nigerian consumers and businesses reliant on petrol imports, mostly from Europe. Until recently a fuel subsidy kept gasoline affordable for consumers, but the program has strained Nigeria’s finances and been mired in corruption allegations. Billions of dollars were siphoned off by regulators and middlemen over a period of decades in a scheme that disincentivized maintenance of state-owned refineries, many of which sit idle or in a state of disrepair. “The advent of the Dangote Refinery is transformative for the dynamics of Nigeria&#8217;s energy market,” says Clementine Wallop, an Africa analyst at Horizon Engage, a geopolitical consulting firm.



Dangote wants to provide a blueprint for industrialization across Africa. “We have to build our own nation by ourselves. We have to build our own continent by ourselves, not [rely on] foreign investment,” he says. Africa has been “a mere dumping ground for finished products,” Dangote argues, and his refinery represents “a pivotal step in ensuring that Africa has the capacity to refine its own crude oil, thereby creating wealth and prosperity for its vast population.”



In Nigeria, that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, gas prices have increased 60% in the African nation over the last six months as Dangote’s refinery has ramped up production, according to market intelligence firm Trading Economics. (And that’s before accounting for the country’s inflation, which was 29% in December.) The driver of these cost increases is the elimination of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy, which President Bola Tinubu cut after assuming office in May 2023. Doing so was made possible because of the hope of Dangote’s refinery, but it didn’t last long. The subsidy was quickly reinstated after petrol prices tripled. Tinubu slashed the subsidy again last summer, causing prices to skyrocket a second time. Nigerians are especially sensitive to gas prices, as many businesses and households depend on fuel-powered generators, given the country’s unreliable electric grid. Protesters have taken to the streets of Lagos and other cities to vent their frustrations about increasing gas prices.



Dangote blames the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (or NNPC), which oversaw Nigeria’s fuel subsidy and which both produces crude and sells refined petrol products. Initially, the NNPC agreed to acquire a 20% stake in Dangote’s refinery with an upfront payment of $1 billion, but later trimmed its stake to about 7% and demanded some of its money back. The NNPC also committed to supply Dangote with 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day, but has failed to fulfill its obligation. The NNPC did not respond to a request for comment.



In September, Dangote sued the NNPC in an attempt to block it from continuing to import and sell refined petrol products, citing a 2021 law requiring domestic producers of crude to supply enough oil to local refineries to meet domestic demand. (That case remains ongoing). The NNPC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/media/6363746461112/naira-crude-deal-dangote-refinery-receives-first-supply-from-nnpcl/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">began</a>&nbsp;supplying Dangote’s refinery with crude in October, but&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2RyMMLkmX8" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;last month that it may reduce its allocation. Dangote is unsparing in his criticism of the organization, which he says is part of his country’s “oil mafia.”



“The oil mafia are more deadly than the one in drugs, because with the oil mafia there are so many people that are involved,” says Dangote. “You might be wining and dining with them, but these are the guys that are really the masters of moving things around.” An anti-graft commission raided Dangote’s office a year ago, but he insists that he’s on good terms with President Tinubu. “We have an extremely, very good relationship. I’ve known him for a very long time,” he says.



While Nigerians are upset with economic conditions, most are not mad at Dangote. “He is seen in most parts of Nigeria as a hero,” says Zainab Usman, director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He is seen as a real industrialist who builds things.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/GettyImages-1257252382.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64691" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/GettyImages-1257252382.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/GettyImages-1257252382-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/GettyImages-1257252382-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Stack towers and pipework at the Dangote Industries Ltd. oil (Photographer: Benson Ibeabuchi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



Born in 1958 to a wealthy family of traders in the city of Kano, Dangote always had ambition. He began his business career on the school playground at age 8 when he parlayed his allowance into a small-time confectionary venture. &#8220;I would use it to buy sweets, and I would give them to some people to sell, and they would bring me the profit,&#8221; Dangote&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/03/04/the-little-known-15-billion-empire-of-africas-richest-man/">told</a>&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;back in 2015. After studying business at AlAzhar University in Cairo, he established an import-export trading venture in Lagos with the help of a $500,000 loan from an uncle. Political connections helped the young entrepreneur win “exclusive import rights in sugar, cement, and rice,” said a State Department cable unearthed by WikiLeaks.



In the late 1990s, Nigeria’s rulers began promoting domestic industry as the country transitioned from years of military rule into a democracy. Dangote capitalized on the change, securing tax incentives to build a sugar mill, flour refinery and cement factory. The cement business has been especially lucrative, generating gross margins of over 60% most years. (Prior to the opening of the refinery, publicly-traded Dangote Cement, of which Dangote owns 86%, accounted for the largest piece of his fortune.) As his empire grew, Dangote maintained goodwill with successive regimes, in large part because of his conglomerate’s focus on consumers. “I think he’s believed staunchly in the fact that Nigerians need products that he has to offer,” says Chika Ezeanya, a professor of African studies at Soka University of America. “Governments can come and go, policies can be changed, but the needs of the Nigerian consumer will only grow and expand.”



When Dangote first announced his refinery in 2013, his plan was to build the plant in southwest Nigeria. Dangote bought refinery technology from Honeywell UOP, a division of the American conglomerate, and brought in engineers from Engineers India Ltd., a state-backed engineering consulting firm, to help design the massive plant. His longtime lieutenant, Edwin Devakumar, a former World Bank engineer, was put in charge. The projected cost was around $10 billion. “It was the biggest risk of my life,” says Dangote about his decision to embark on the project. “If this didn’t work, I was dead.”



After three years of delays due to disputes with local officials, Dangote abandoned his plans to build on the original site. He forked over $100 million to Nigeria’s government to acquire land in its current location outside of Lagos, but due to that site’s swampy conditions, he had to dredge 65 million cubic meters of sand and construct a port to move it all. Along the way, construction displaced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/03/lagos-nigeria-dangote-industrial-complex-refinery-fertiliser-plant#:~:text=7%20months%20old-,'There%20is%20nowhere%20to%20fish%20any%20more'%3A%20life%20in,of%20Nigeria's%20biggest%20industrial%20complex&amp;text=On%20the%20outskirts%20of,with%20floodlights%20and%20security%20cameras." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">thousands of people</a>, prompting local backlash. Then Covid hit, delaying and complicating the schedule. “I can spend the whole day telling you about these challenges,” Dangote sighs.



The costs accumulated—in part because Dangote kept insisting on making the refinery bigger than originally planned. He took out $5.5 billion in bank loans and sold off 3% stakes in his cement business to Dubai’s investment corporation and an Australian sovereign wealth fund in 2013 for about $300 million apiece; he later sold off other slices to private equity firm Gateway Partners and others for undisclosed sums. An intercompany loan for $10 billion from his holding company – which owns his cement, flour and sugar businesses – helped fund the refinery&#8217;s years of cost overruns. The total tab of nearly $23 billion was more than double initial projections.



The refinery still has about $3 billion in outstanding debt. In August, Fitch downgraded its rating on the publicly traded bonds due to “significant deterioration in the group&#8217;s liquidity position” following the refinery’s under-utilization last year due to lack of crude, as well as the plummeting value of Nigeria’sNaira, which has lost over 70% of its value against the dollar since June 2023 when Nigeria’s, central bank floated the currency. Dangote says that liquidity is not a problem, and that the refinery is sufficiently dollarized (meaning that his foreign customers pay in U.S. dollars) to withstand the Naira&#8217;s devaluation.



Facing these challenges, Dangote is determined to make the refinery a success. He has set up a family office in Dubai and his three daughters work for the family business in various capacities, yet most of his focus is still firmly in Nigeria, not on succession planning. The billionaire says that he still spends a lot of his time at his refinery, meeting with engineers and managers. Plus there are more challenges ahead—including building a subsea pipeline to transport natural gas from the Niger Delta to Lagos, and doubling output at the refinery’s fertilizer plant. He also says he wants to take the refinery public in the next year or two.



“I’ve been fighting battles all my life,” Dangote says, “and I have not lost one yet.

Dangote Group Chief Executive Officer Aliko Dangote Interview

Africa’s Richest Man Doubled His Fortune On A Massive — And Risky — $23 Billion Bet

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Big-name billionaires worth a collective $1.2 trillion—including four of the five richest men in the world—attended the inauguration of President Donald Trump Monday morning as many looked to strengthen their relationship with the pro-business president as he takes office.&nbsp;(Follow here for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/01/20/trump-inauguration-live-updates-trump-will-return-to-office-in-hours/">Inauguration Day</a>&nbsp;updates.)



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194374953.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64393 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194374953.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194374953-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194374953-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
Donald Trump Jr., Howard Lutnick, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, and Doug Burgum attend the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th President of the United States. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
</div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key Facts</h2>



The world’s three wealthiest people attended multiple inauguration morning events:&nbsp;Amazon founder&nbsp;Jeff Bezos&nbsp;(worth $239.4 billion according to Forbes’ estimates), Meta’s&nbsp;Mark Zuckerberg&nbsp;($211.8 billion) and&nbsp;Elon Musk&nbsp;($433.9 billion), the Tesla CEO, world’s richest person and presidential confidant who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-spent-over-quarter-billion-dollars-help-elect-trump-2024-12-06/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">spent</a>&nbsp;over a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump win November&#8217;s election.



OpenAI CEO&nbsp;Sam Altman&nbsp;($1.1 billion) and Apple CEO&nbsp;Tim Cook&nbsp;($2.2 billion), who donated money to the inauguration, were in the Capitol Rotunda Monday morning, as was billionaire backer&nbsp;Miriam Adelson&nbsp;($31.9 billion) and former Fox News Chairman&nbsp;Rupert Murdoch&nbsp;($22.2 billion).



Bernard Arnault&nbsp;($179.6 billion), the head of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury empire and the richest person in France, was&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/elizlanders/status/1881398108179046670?s=46&amp;t=bUTQCdKx4w7TbNWl8KRyJw" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">at the inauguration</a>&nbsp;with his son, Alexandre.



Mukesh Ambani&nbsp;($98.1 billion), the richest man in India,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-inauguration-billionaires-ceos-ambani-zuckerberg-bezos-attend-church-2025-01-20/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;attended inauguration events, and Trump’s friend&nbsp;Phil Ruffin, a Las Vegas casino executive worth $4.7 billion, was also spotted at the Capitol, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/20/us/trump-inauguration-president/e39d0884-13c3-5d0c-912c-72acfc9cd270?smid=url-share" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.



Several billionaires and their spouses have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/12/22/the-billionaires-trumps-picked-for-next-administration-elon-musk-tilman-fertitta-and-more/">offered top roles</a>&nbsp;in the Trump administration, including&nbsp;Howard Lutnick&nbsp;(<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2024/11/20/the-most-hated-guy-on-wall-street-the-unspoken-story-around-howard-lutnick-trumps-pick-for-commerce-secretary/">$1.5 billion</a>) and&nbsp;Vivek Ramaswamy&nbsp;($1 billion), both of whom were seen at the inauguration.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="594" height="396" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194369892.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64391" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194369892.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2194369892-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">(Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



Coinbase CEO&nbsp;Brian Armstrong&nbsp;($12.8 billion) was invited to inauguration-related events, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-10/openai-meta-uber-ceos-plan-to-attend-trump-inauguration-events" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>, but hadn’t yet been seen as of the swearing in.



Other billionaires who have been offered jobs in the administration, but their attendance wasn’t confirmed, include&nbsp;Stephen Feinberg&nbsp;($5 billion),&nbsp;Warren Stephens&nbsp;($3.4 billion),&nbsp;Jared Isaacman&nbsp;($1.9 billion),&nbsp;Steve Witkoff&nbsp;($1 billion), Linda McMahon (husband&nbsp;Vince McMahon&nbsp;is worth $3 billion) and Kelly Loeffler (husband&nbsp;Jeff Sprecher&nbsp;is worth $1.1 billion).



Zuckerberg co-hosted a pre-Inaugural Ball&nbsp;<a href="https://puck.news/mark-zuckerberg-is-throwing-an-inauguration-party-for-trump/?_gl=1*17fobxi*_up*MQ..*_ga*OTIwODg3ODI1LjE3MzY5MzkxMjY.*_ga_SEFD191RFM*MTczNjkzOTEyNi4xLjAuMTczNjkzOTEyNi4wLjAuMA.." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reception</a>&nbsp;for Trump alongside Adelson,&nbsp;Tilman Fertitta&nbsp;($10.2 billion) and Todd Ricketts, whose father&nbsp;J. Joe Ricketts&nbsp;and family are worth an estimated $4.2 billion.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How Much Is Trump Worth?</h2>



Trump&nbsp;himself is worth an estimated $6.7 billion thanks to his stake in Truth Social&#8217;s parent company, his real estate investments and other assets.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What Other Billionaires Could Attend?</h2>



Dozens of other billionaires also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-harris-has-more-billionaires-prominently-backing-her-than-trump-bezos-and-griffin-weigh-in-updated/">supported Trump</a>&nbsp;on his road to a second term who haven’t been confirmed as attendees, including&nbsp;Robert “Woody” Johnson&nbsp;($3.3 billion),&nbsp;Elizabeth&nbsp;and&nbsp;Richard Uihlein&nbsp;(each worth $5.9 billion),&nbsp;Roger Penske&nbsp;($6.5 billion) and&nbsp;Timothy Mellon&nbsp;(family was worth $14.1 billion).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Did Billionaires Like Musk, Bezos And Zuckerberg Back Trump’s Campaign?</h2>



Some of them did, but others either stayed out of the presidential race or were Trump foes before they started trying to make nice. Zuckerberg’s Meta previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/07/mark-zuckerberg-blasts-trump-and-announces-indefinite-ban-on-presidents-facebook-instagram-accounts/">banned</a>&nbsp;Trump from Instagram and Facebook—and Trump once&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-election-book-00176639" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">threatened</a>&nbsp;to send him to prison—before he fell in line following the election results. Since then, Zuckerberg has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/12/23/ford-will-donate-1-million-fleet-of-vehicles-to-trump-inauguration-latest-company-to-contribute/">donated</a>&nbsp;$1 million to his inaugural fund,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-zuckerberg-meet-mar-a-lago-semafor-reports-2025-01-11/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">met with Trump</a>&nbsp;at Mar-A-Lago, made&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/01/07/meta-ditches-fact-checks-for-x-style-community-notes-zuckerberg-says-it-will-restore-free-expression/">changes</a>&nbsp;to how its platforms fact-check posts and put Trump’s friend Dana White on Meta’s board. In the leadup to the election, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate but did&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-19/mark-zuckerberg-calls-donald-trump-badass-without-endorsing-for-president" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">call</a>&nbsp;Trump’s response to his assassination attempt “badass.” Bezos also has a history of clashing with Trump: Amazon in 2019&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2019/12/09/amazon-blames-trumps-personal-dislike-of-bezos-for-losing-pentagon-jedi-contract/">blamed Trump&#8217;s</a>&nbsp;&#8220;personal dislike&#8221; of Bezos for losing a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract with the Pentagon, and Trump has been critical of the Bezos-owned Washington Post. Bezos didn’t endorse Trump last year but&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1812315786507088370?lang=en" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;he “showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire” following the assassination attempt, and donated $1 million to the inaugural fund. Others have supported him all along. Musk is among Trump’s biggest donors, alongside&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/miriam-adelson/?list=rtb/">Adelson</a>, the widow of billionaire Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson, who donated $100 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Preserve America during the election.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/tilman-fertitta/?list=rtb/">Fertitta</a>, owner of the Houston Rockets and Landry’s restaurant group, has been nominated to serve as U.S. ambassador to Italy after the Texas billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/21/donald-trump-tilman-fertitta-ambassador/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">hosted a fundraiser</a>&nbsp;for Trump last year. Ricketts, a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, has been a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/trump-collides-with-the-world-of-baseball" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">major fundraiser</a>&nbsp;for Republican politicians and, while he initially fundraised within the party against Trump during his first campaign, he ultimately went on to spearhead pro-Trump fundraising in 2020 and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagobusiness.com/politics/todd-ricketts-attending-trump-campaign-fundraiser" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">last year</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tangent</h2>



Other corporate leaders planned on attending the inauguration, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/donald-trump-inauguration-ceos-business-fundraising-2b0d5086" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a>. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended, after his platform took itself offline Sunday due to a nationwide ban taking effect—and restored service when Trump vowed to delay the ban upon taking office. Other supporters are throwing events around Washington over inauguration weekend,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/donald-trump-inauguration-ceos-business-fundraising-2b0d5086" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">including</a>&nbsp;an “Inaugural Crypto Ball” that featured Snoop Dogg and a party held by Uber and its CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-10/openai-meta-uber-ceos-plan-to-attend-trump-inauguration-events" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Dara Khosrowshahi</a>. James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola Company, on Tuesday&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/margomartin/status/1879330618225676448" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">presented Trump</a>&nbsp;with the &#8220;first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle.&#8221; Microsoft, Ford, Google and AI search startup Perplexity also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/01/09/google-will-donate-another-1-million-to-trumps-record-high-inaugural-fund/">donated $1 million</a>&nbsp;to the inaugural fund.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/donald-trump-inauguration-ceos-business-fundraising-2b0d5086" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Ripple</a>, a crypto company, gave $5 million worth of its cryptocurrency to the inaugural committee. Other major donors include Goldman Sachs, Intuit, Toyota, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, General Motors, Bank of America, AT&amp;T and Stanley Black &amp; Decker, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/trump-inauguration-sponsors-large-company-donations-a3cc1b92?mod=article_inline" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Journal reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Big Number</h2>



More than $170 million. That’s how much Trump’s inaugural fund is believed to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/us/politics/trump-inauguration-donors.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">have raised,</a>&nbsp;almost three times as much as the $62 million raised by President Joe Biden four years ago and well above the previous record of $107 million, set by Trump&#8217;s 2016 inauguration. Donors who gave $1 million, or raised $2 million from others, were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/trump-inauguration-sponsors-large-company-donations-a3cc1b92?mod=article_inline" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly given</a>&nbsp;six tickets to a series of events in the days leading up to the inauguration, including a “candlelight dinner” with Trump and Melania Trump and a black-tie ball.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Billionaires Worth A Combined $1.2 Trillion Attended Trump’s Inauguration: Here’s Who Was There—From Musk To Bezos

The Amazon billionaire’s heavy-lift rocket is poised for its first spaceflight. If it succeeds, it will give satellite operators and the Pentagon a long-desired alternative to SpaceX—and at a cheaper price, Forbes reveals.



In2021, Elon Musk trolled Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, mocking his rival’s slow progress toward launching a rocket into space. “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol,” he<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1386825367948644352" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;wrote</a>&nbsp;on Twitter.



Now, almost 25 years after Bezos started the company, Blue Origin is on the brink of clapping back. Its powerful New Glenn rocket is at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center for its inaugural launch, which could come as soon as early morning Monday.



Plenty of people in the space industry and government are cheering for it to succeed – and to end SpaceX’s near monopoly on lofting American satellites into orbit.



“The space industry likes having choices,” said Caleb Henry, an analyst at Quilty Space. “And it doesn&#8217;t have that today. It just has SpaceX.”



And Blue Origin is selling launches at a price per satellite that’s significantly better than SpaceX, a former employee told&nbsp;Forbes.



The launch attempt comes less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. During his first term, the former president attacked Bezos over negative coverage in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Now Trump, with Musk at his right hand, is promising a shakeup in government spending and regulation that could tilt the playing field for the commercial space industry — and threaten some of Blue Origin’s government contracts.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-animal-spirits">ANIMAL SPIRITS</h3>



Bezos has positioned Blue Origin as the slow and steady alternative to SpaceX’s “move fast and fail quickly” ethos. Its motto is “gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously,” and its logo features two tortoises. So far the tortoise has been soundly beaten by SpaceX’s hare.



Over the past decade, SpaceX ramped up its launch cadence to unprecedented levels while its competition was largely sidelined. The old heavyweights of space launch — the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Europe’s Arianespace — struggled with delays in developing new rockets, and Western sanctions removed Russian rockets as an option. SpaceX’s Falcon rockets propelled cargo to orbit 133 times in 2024, with one failure, the vast majority of the 145 launches attempted in the U.S. last year and more than half of the 263 worldwide, according to space activity tracker<a href="https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space24.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;Jonathan McDowell</a>.



But New Glenn, first announced in 2016, promises to be a fierce competitor. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, it’s a two-stage heavy lift workhorse, with the first stage designed to return to earth for reuse. But according to Blue Origin, a larger nose cone gives New Glenn twice the cargo volume of Falcon 9, and its powerful engines are designed to propel double the payload mass.



And Blue Origin is pricing to give customers more bang for the buck than SpaceX, according to a former employee who now works for a competitor who spoke to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;on the condition of anonymity.



Blue Origin is charging roughly $110 million per launch, he said, compared to about $70 million for a Falcon 9 – effectively offering to carry twice as many satellites for roughly 50% more money.



Blue Origin didn’t respond to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn rocket, which stands 32 stories tall and is designed to launch 45 tons of payload into orbit, is pictured during a hotfire test at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Dec. 27.Blue Origin



New Glenn is already proving attractive to companies building large constellations of small satellites for low-Earth orbit, particularly as those satellites have gotten larger, said Henry.



Blue Origin has won contracts to use it to launch satellites for all of the major constellations, except, of course, for SpaceX’s Starlink. That includes AST Mobile, which is developing a network to provide cellular service from space. The company has said New Glenn can carry eight of its Block 2 satellites, which will be the largest yet put in low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 can carry just four.



And Bezos’ Amazon.com is leaning heavily on Blue Origin to realize its plans for its Kuiper satellite network. Blue Origin is slated to launch at least 23% of the constellation and potentially as much as half. Amazon expects to pay Blue Origin $2.7 billion through 2028, it said in a financial filing last year.



The U.S. government is also eager for another option to launch its intelligence and communications satellites. In June the Defense Department picked Blue Origin, along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, to compete for up to $5.6 billion worth of launches through 2029.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-money-out">MONEY OUT</h3>



It’s welcome revenue after years of heavy spending to build the company. On the New Glenn program alone, Blue Origin has spent on the order of $10 billion, the former employee estimated. Apart from a few NASA contracts, that money has come from the deep pockets of Bezos, who has committed to use the vast fortune he’s made from Amazon to realize his boyhood space dreams.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates his net worth at $233 billion, a distant second in the world to Musk’s $416 billion.



While it’s taken a quarter century for Blue Origin to take its first shot at space, it has notched impressive achievements on the way, while building infrastructure for mass rocket launches that SpaceX only put together gradually after reaching orbit. The company developed a powerful rocket engine, the Be-4, that’s powered two successful launches of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. With its reusable New Shepard rocket, which is designed to bring tourists to the edge of space, Blue Origin has become the only rocket company besides SpaceX to pull off the trick of landing its first stage. And it has built up manufacturing facilities expected to produce over 100 Be-4 engines in 2025, and multiple boosters to support a pace of 12 launches a year.



“It&#8217;s easy to be a little flip about, ‘SpaceX has done so much and Blue Origin has done little,’ but it&#8217;s nuanced,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of the space consulting firm BryceTech.



A successful launch would be powerful validation for Blue Origin, but the attempt comes against a cloudy political backdrop. Trump has tasked Musk with leading an effort to chop government spending and regulation. A relaxation of rules in the heavily regulated space industry would help all participants, but competitors fear<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2024/11/12/in-trumps-space-race-musks-spacex-is-a-sure-bet/">&nbsp;preferential treatment for SpaceX</a>.



Exhibit A: Trump’s nominee to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman. His company Shift4 Payments has invested in SpaceX, and Isaacman has bankrolled two private spaceflights on Falcon rockets.



Last March, Isaacman&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1767893365541032333" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">questioned</a>&nbsp;the wisdom of NASA’s decision to fund the development of redundant lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in case one faltered.



But Bezos has professed confidence that Musk won’t use his influence in the Trump administration to benefit SpaceX at Blue Origin’s expense.



“I take at face value what has been said, which is that [Musk] is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said in December at a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;conference.



Bezos, in any event, is looking far beyond the next four years. He wants Blue Origin to drive the creation of an off-world economy where manufacturing and mining is done in in space, and the “Earth will be zoned residential and light industry.” Someday he thinks that will make Blue Origin a bigger business than Amazon, he said at the&nbsp;Times&nbsp;event. But it’s all predicated on bringing down the cost of reaching space, starting with New Glenn.



“We know how to travel to space. We know how to land on the Moon. We need to be able to do it a hundred times cheaper,” Bezos told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">space YouTuber Tim Dodd</a>&nbsp;in September. “That’s what will really open the heavens to humanity.”

New York Times Holds Annual DealBook Summit

With New Glenn Launch, Bezos Looks To Break Musk’s Stranglehold On Space

Musk’s fortune soared by a record $170 billion in 2024–putting him an all-time high dollar amount ahead of Jeff Bezos, the world’s second richest person.



The soaring valuations of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI boosted Elon Musk’s fortune to an estimated $421.2 billion as of December 31, 2024, up from $251 billion at the start of 2024. He’s the first person to ever be worth&nbsp;more than $300 billion (a milestone he briefly achieved in 2021), let alone $400 billion.



As a result, Musk ended the year a record $188 billion richer than the world’s next wealthiest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who was worth an estimated $233.5 billion when the ball dropped in New York City’s Times Square earlier this week. A representative for Musk has not replied to a request for comment from Forbes.



The record for the largest year-end lead between No. 1 and No. 2 richest more than doubled in 2024. Back in 2021—the previous record—Musk was worth $72 billion more than then-No. 2 Bernard Arnault.



Musk actually lost the title of world’s richest person to Arnault in January 2024, when a Delaware judge voided his 2018 deal to receive options equaling a 9% stake in Tesla—then worth about $56 billion. (Forbes&nbsp;discounted the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal.)&nbsp;But Musk regained the crown in May, when his new artificial intelligence startup xAI raised $6 billion at a $24 billion valuation, helping boost his fortune to $209.5 billion at the time. Since then he’s never looked back.



In December, xAI raised another $6 billion at a reported $50 billion valuation, giving Musk an estimated 54% stake worth $27 billion. That same month, SpaceX was valued at $350 billion in a private share sale, up from $180 billion a year earlier, boosting the value of Musk’s estimated 42% stake to $147 billion.



Tesla shares also hit an all-time high on December 17 and ended the year up 93%, with almost all of that gain coming after Musk helped re-elect Donald Trump as president on November 5 and was named co-head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) a week later. That boosted the value of Musk’s 12% stake in Tesla to $166 billion.



And that’s excluding Musk’s Tesla options that were voided by the Delaware judge in January 2024. Though Tesla shareholders voted to reapprove the options in June, in early December the Delaware judge reaffirmed her decision to void the award. For now,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;is continuing to discount the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal, giving them a discounted valuation of nearly $57.8 billion.



Musk, who became the first person ever worth $400 billion or more&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/12/11/elon-musk-now-worth-more-than-400-billion-worlds-richest-person/">in December</a>, saw his fortune soar by a record $170 billion during 2024–or by roughly one Bernard Arnault, who ended the year as the world’s fifth richest person, worth an estimated $168.4 billion.



Tesla shares have fallen about 6% as of 3 pm E.T. on Thursday, January 2 following news from the company <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/02/tesla-q4-vehicle-deliveries-fall-short-of-estimates-annual-deliveries-fell-1-in-2024/">earlier in the day</a> that vehicle deliveries in 2024 fell compared to 2023, and that fourth-quarter deliveries missed analysts’ expectations. That wiped out nearly $15 billion from Musk’s fortune. But he’s still the number one richest, worth an estimated nearly $406 billion. And the gap between Musk and No. 2 Bezos is still yawning at nearly $172 billion.

Tech Illustration Images

The Unprecedented Gap Between Elon Musk And The World’s Next Richest

Arturo Lomeli is transforming his super premium tequila brand into Mexico’s first luxury house—including hotels and boutiques—while maintaining the brand’s independence.



<abbr>I</abbr>nside his modern&nbsp;home in the hills of Guadalajara, Mexico, Arturo Lomeli is eating one of his favorite foods—taquitos, piled high with crema, salsa and guacamole—as tequila is poured into crystal flutes around the table. The blue-and-white hand-painted ceramic bottles that Lomeli’s brand, Clase Azul, has become famous for dot the room.



Next up are mezcals in decanters painted a matte black, red or teal. And then there’s the special edition añejo tequilas, featuring artisans from around Mexico. To the right of the overflowing lunch table, Lomeli starts pulling out more bottles from his bar—where a large surrealist-style portrait of Clase Azul’s founder and CEO with a bird on his shoulder watches over his personal collection.



“My spiritual soul was chosen to protect it. I&#8217;m the guardian. A Mexican messenger,” says Lomeli, 52, as sips of the $1,500 Dia De Los Muertos collection 2024 release—in a purple bottle featuring a metal skeleton playing an accordion—make the rounds for everyone but Lomeli. He gave up drinking a few years ago, he says, partly because he wants to live past 100.



That doesn’t stop him from running his super-premium tequila brand that’s exported to 92 countries. Over the past three decades, Lomeli has perfected a playbook that relies on authenticity, from the distillation process to keeping the business Mexican-owned. He takes a longterm view and has invested vertically even where it might seem absurd.



For example, one of the most recent additions to his sprawling bottling plant in the state of Jalisco—where a team of 50 artisans each glaze 100 signature ceramic decanters per day five-days a week—is a box-making facility pumping out custom packaging as fast at 18,000 sheets per hour. Clase Azul even manufactures the metal caps for its decanters, at a rate of 476 caps per hour. This strategy of going deep has created one of the hottest tequila brands ever sold.



“They&#8217;ve carved out a niche. Arturo’s got this vision that is very different than all the other tequilas,” says Wayne Chaplin, CEO of $26 billion (annual sales) Southern Glazer, which has distributed Clase Azul for two decades. “Sometimes people are very anxious to sell more, quicker. He’s not willing to compromise the luxury aspirations for his brand to get additional sales.”



Analysts in the food industry say that if Clase Azul were to ever sell, the deal would be in the billions. Which says as much about the sky-high multiples that spirits trade at these days as it does about the strength of Lomeli’s business. Clase Azul says it keeps its financials private. From 200,000 accounts&nbsp;globally, Clase Azul has estimated annual revenue of $150 million—surpassing the sales Casamigos had when Diageo purchased it in 2017 for $1 billion, or a deal value of 10 times revenue.



Hand-made Tale: Clase Azul&#8217;s signature ceramic decanters are produced in Jalisco, Mexico by a team of 36 artisans who create around 200 bottles a day, five days a week.Clase Azul



Forbes&nbsp;estimates Clase Azul could be worth more than $1.5 billion. That’s using a multiple of 10 times sales, which is on the lower end of today’s market, particularly for a tequila brand. Beyond the Casamigos sale, Bacardi acquired Patron in 2018 at 8 times sales for a total of $5.1 billion. In 2022, actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Teremana tequila sold a minority stake to Jägermeister in a deal industry insiders peg as high as $4 billion, or as much as 25 times estimated sales. Other spirits acquisitions are just as high—in 2020, actor Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation gin, for example, sold for $610 million, or an estimated 24 times revenue.



Those high multiples match the profitability. Clase Azul’s net income margins are estimated above 30%. Gross margins approach 70%. That&nbsp;tops publicly traded spirits conglomerates like $9 billion (sales) Constellation Brands (owner of Svedka and tequilas Casa Noble and Mi Casa) or $20 billion (sales) Diageo (Don Julio tequila, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff).



But don’t expect an acquisition or public offering any time soon—Lomeli says Clase Azul will remain independent, as well as 100% Mexican-owned. Lomeli is the brand’s majority shareholder. A minority stake is owned by his brother-in-law from his first marriage, Juan Sanchez, who advised Lomeli as a banker based in San Francisco before starting full-time in 2003.



Together, the two men built Clase Azul through a combination of small business loans and grit, and Lomeli says they have no interest in changing that now: “We&#8217;re not in a rush.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<abbr>A</abbr>fter growing up&nbsp;in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, Lomeli graduated from the university there with a degree in political science&nbsp;and decided to open his own bar. But the fun had faded by his 24th birthday, and he tried making and selling alcohol instead. He first launched a pomegranate liquor called La Pinta. Then came a tequila—a low-quality volume play with generic branding. Both ventures failed.



“To be unattached is one of the keys,” Lomeli says of his business philosophy. “If you&#8217;re attached to something, and if that disappears out of your control, you&#8217;re going to suffer.”



Lomeli adds, “I am attached to the things that I can control, which is my emotions, my reactions, my way of thinking, my discipline, my determination.”



He’s learned that stoicism the hard way. (Though Lomeli still serves La Pinta at his home.) After going back to school in 1999, he realized a luxury brand with Mexican-made ceramics could set his tequila business apart.



The first bottles of Clase Azul reposado launched in 2000 with 58 cases. Early on, an importer in San Diego nearly tricked Lomeli, then unable to read English, to give up all of the U.S. rights. But Lomeli had asked Sanchez to review the contract and narrowly avoided getting ripped off.



To secure debt in the early years, Sanchez counseled to focus on profitability. That meant it took longer to build the consumer brand, but Lomeli could retain his equity without giving up shares to outside investors.



“When you&#8217;re independent and private, although the journey is harder, you&#8217;re more in control,” says Sanchez. “A lot of people think it&#8217;s an overnight success story, but it&#8217;s truly been nearly 28 years of a lot of hard work and pain and suffering.”



Lomeli started seeing results after bringing on Sanchez full-time to focus on America. After waiting 18 months for an importer’s license, Lomeli and Sanchez found a few popular establishments around San Francisco to try bottles. By the time Southern Glazer called, Clase Azul was sold at 100 of the area’s top restaurants and bars. Southern took over distribution in 2005. Sales tripled within six months, and America became so important that Lomeli moved to&nbsp;San Diego for four years.



Through the growing pains, a group of celebrity investors offered to inject capital into the business. Lomeli and Sanchez agreed and prepared to double production. But the deal fell through, and they got caught overextended with too much inventory and not enough cash. Lomeli moved back to Guadalajara to steer the business back to profitability.



Brush With Greatness: Even as Clase Azul has grown to 140,000 cases annually, a Mexican artisan paints every bottle.Zenith Adventure Media



As brand recognition grew from resorts in Los Cabos, Mexico, expansion mode hit again by 2013. It caused Lomeli, an avid golfer who today owns a local soccer team in Baja, to relocate once again—this time to New York City, an underperforming market event though it was one of Southern’s biggest.



After more than 1,000 tastings around New York—for which he lugged bottles around the city—cases of Clase Azul started selling out. Emboldened, in 2014 Lomeli approached Southern to end his distribution agreement in New York. After some negotiating, Southern agreed, and Lomeli built up his own local salesforce.



“We control for longevity,” adds Lomeli. “If you don&#8217;t face the fear, you&#8217;re not going to evolve yourself.”



By 2019, Lomeli’s strategy paid off—revenue surpassed $55 million. That year, he and Sanchez got an offer to buy the company for $1 billion. They said no.



“It’s not authentic,” Lomeli recalls telling one of the bankers at the time.



More investors have been turned down since then. They also considered turning parent company Casa Tradicion into a conglomerate with vodka and other spirits, but ultimately decided to only sell what’s “rooted in our culture.”



As Clase Azul has grown, Lomeli has invested in infrastructure on a big scale. Its bottling factory opened in Jalisco in 2022 with the capacity to make 150,000 bottles per month. All the while, Clase Azul maintained quality while doubling down on exclusivity. Some editions have produced just 10 bottles.



Tequila has been on a rollercoaster with more ups than downs. In 2022 tequila was America’s fastest-growing major spirits category, with double-digit growth or more among super premium brands. But there’s been a recent slowdown. Projections were off for 2023—so much that Clase Azul expected the market to grow 44% but it only grew 4%. In the aftermath, Lomeli shut down a tequila factory and a ceramics-making facility.



“Growing at triple digits put us in a machine of growth that was very stressful,” says Lomeli, who often works at home from his hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber and is building a dream spa there to extend what he believes could be his last reincarnation. “Most successful people are not the ones who have more money. They are the ones who have enough. So the question is, when is enough?”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<abbr>At</abbr>an unlisted-on-Google-Maps&nbsp;space in downtown Brooklyn called The Loft, Clase Azul has been building a community through collectors-only tasting events and concierge services for its top customers that has even included a marriage proposal. On a recent December night, The Loft was packed with about 30 collectors who had all pre-ordered a trio of special edition bottles of Clase Azul’s Master Artisan collection for $22,500, without tasting a single drop.



As the husband-and-wife duo Fernando Jimón and María Elena López who specialize in the dying Mexican art of&nbsp;barro bandera&nbsp;(or “flag-colored clay”) unveiled the designs and their inspiration, the collectors sipped the tequila for the first time. A green bottle featuring the Mexican folkore of nahuales (people who can shape-shift into animals) in the form of cats. It comes with tequila aged eight years in American whiskey casks and finished in barrels from Tuscany. The tequila inside a red bottle with a moon ended up in wine barrels from Bordeaux. A white decanter with an eagle inspired by Mexico’s flag had tequila finished in fortified wine barrels from Bombarral, Portugal.



“It’s the Porsche of tequila,” says serial entrepreneur Ronak Patel, who spent about $26,700&nbsp;on all three of the night’s releases, as well as two other&nbsp;bottles from Clase Azul’s breast cancer awareness collection. “It’s only going to appreciate in value. And they’ve created a community of appreciation for the art that they do.”



Raising The Bar: Chic restaurants like La Terraza at Clase Azul&#8217;s property in Los Cabos, Mexico, are part of Lomeli&#8217;s hospitality vision for the brand.Clase Azul



That’s the essence of the latest evolution of Lomeli’s strategy. In addition to The Loft in Brooklyn, there’s Clase Azul properties in Tokyo, Japan, opened this year, as well as in Los Cabos, Mexico. Set on the Pacific Coast, Clase Azul opened La Terraza in 2022 featuring a high-end restaurant, bar and boutique. These locations often feature limited-edition tequilas only sold there. Next up is a new distillery built for top customers to come visit with immersive experiences. Called La Hacienda, the hospitality space is set to open in Jalisco next year, after being in the works for eight years.



“You have much more control,” Lomeli says, “and you are not in the hands of somebody who can destroy you.”



It’s community-building 2.0 – for some of the richest people around the world. This core is the future of Clase Azul. Lomeli wants Clase Azul to become the first Mexican luxury house. His big vision extends beyond tequila to ceramics and more. A cerveza-style beer or a Mexican-grown wine could easily join the lineup, and a line of luxury hotels across Mexico, like Nobu’s extension, is another goal.



“That&#8217;s the biggest dream. It goes perfectly with our purpose to exist—to captivate the world of the magic of Mexican culture,” says Lomeli. “We have that in our veins, in our DNA.”



And he can afford to build his company over time. “The luxury industry requires another thing,” Lomeli says. “The other pillar is patience.”

20th Anniversary Celebration Of Clase Azul Tequila

How Clase Azul Built A Billion-Dollar Tequila Business Beyond The Top Shelf

<abbr>In</abbr> 1882, John D. Rockefeller, the world’s richest man, created the first full-service single-family office in the U.S. to manage and invest his fortune, said to be $1.4 billion ($31 billion in today’s dollars) at his death in 1937. Fast-forward 142 years, and many members of The Forbes 400 have a family office to help them manage their enormous fortunes.



But so do thousands of other American families who don’t belong to the billionaire class. At their core, family offices are a means to invest, preserve and pass on fortunes—not to build them de novo. They’re both a safety net and status symbol. “People are busy, and they want to know: ‘How are we doing? Is there anything to worry about?’ ” says Mark Rogozinski, president of Family Office Services for Chicago-based Cresset Asset Management.



Family offices are taking off for many reasons, including increasing wealth and aggressive marketing to the ordinary rich. Baby Boomers and their elders also have concerns about passing on their accumulated wealth (in aggregate, some $84 trillion) and have a desire to involve younger generations in philanthropy. On the other side, the family office providers have access to new technology that can better monitor investment performance and share financial data, making it easier for them to expand. The final impetus is tax savings—the 2017 tax overhaul, coupled with a tax court ruling that year involving the Lender family (of bagel fame), mean that investment expenses which are no longer deductible on individual tax returns can often be written off at the family office level.



It’s unclear how many single-family offices now operate in the U.S.—estimates range from 3,000 up to 7,000. But all agree that the number is growing. Deloitte conservatively estimates there will be 3,550 single-family offices in North America in 2025, up 61% from 2019. (For comparison,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;counted 880 billionaires in the U.S. and Canada in 2024.)



It still requires at least $100 million in investable assets (and preferably $250 million) for a single-family office to make sense, but those with as little as $25 million, or even $10 million, can find a spot with a multifamily operator if they’re ready to pay for estate, tax and charitable planning and access to alternative investments like derivatives and venture capital.



A single-family office costs a minimum of $1 million annually (and usually more), but multi-family offices run from 0.5% to 2% of assets a year (generally, the bigger the portfolio, the lower the percentage). Sometimes there are transaction and performance fees as well. Concierge services, such as managing a client’s homes and security and travel, may cost extra. The fee structure is often negotiable and bespoke, just like the services. Some multifamily offices charge a fixed fee per year, starting at $50,000 and ranging up to $1 million for full service.



More and more people want (and can afford) such white-glove treatment. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances found the richest 1% of Americans (that’s 1.3 million households) had a minimum net worth of&nbsp;<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBL99T999309" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$11 million</a>, while the top 0.1% (<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLTP1310" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">133,000</a>&nbsp;households) had a net worth of at least&nbsp;<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLTP1311" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$46 million</a>.



The original multifamily offices were born when a single rich family invited in a handful of others to defray costs. Cresset, founded seven years ago in Chicago by two private-equity veterans to manage their own families’ wealth, is one of a new breed of registered investment advisors expanding aggressively into the multifamily business. After merging in June with The Connable Office, a 130-year-old multifamily office, it’s up to $60 billion in assets under management.



One new multifamily player, New York City’s Beatrice Advisors, is the first owned by a Black woman. It was launched in June by Christina Lewis with assets from her own family and those of her rich friends. Her father, Forbes 400 member Reginald Lewis—a Baltimore-born, Harvard-trained deal lawyer—died in 1993 at 50 from an inoperable brain tumor. Christina was just 12 then, and describes her family as being “underadvised” at his death. Beatrice is investing heavily in technology, creating digital dashboards for its clients that display a family’s whole net worth, including their investment portfolio, business assets and even intellectual property. The aim, Lewis says, is “transitioning our knowledge to the client over time, so that the client is in the driver’s seat.”



In contrast to the Lewises, the Lipitz family has had decades to work out its wealth transition. Gene Lipitz, now 58, got into the family office game in 1997. His dad, Roger C. Lipitz, now 82, had sold the company he built—Meridian Healthcare, a chain of 45 nursing homes—for $205 million in 1993. Father and son began collaborating on investments informally, but Roger became increasingly involved in civic and charitable work and suggested they formalize that partnership, with the younger Lipitz taking the investing lead. Gene first hired a multifamily office in 1997 but was dissatisfied. Ultimately, in 1999, after selling his own tax- and risk-management company to Citicorp, Gene decided to create his own office; it now manages investments for three generations with three full-time employees, outsourcing such functions as accounting. The office’s mission statement is revised regularly. Failing to do that, Gene says, is “a great way to lose buy-in from the next generation.”



Even for people with decades of business experience, starting a single-family office can be daunting, beginning with the challenge of hiring qualified staff. That work, too, is often outsourced. Kay Shah, a director in the Family Office Division at StevenDouglas, a national boutique search firm, spends her days recruiting financial pros to serve in family offices, which typically have five to 15 employees, she says.



New cloud-based platforms help professional managers track portfolio holdings and performance across asset classes, but family offices controlled by older generations still tend to lag technologically. Josh Kanter, an attorney and wealth advisor in Salt Lake City, concluded, based on his own experience, that family offices need to become more tech-centric. After his father, famed tax lawyer and trust engineer Burton Kanter (an advisor to the billionaire Pritzker family), died in 2001, Josh took over managing the family’s office. He found keeping all generations up to date on practical details difficult. For example, he says, the family will pay for tuition and health care, but only if certain guidelines are followed. The problem was that there was no single place to find that sort of information, other than sorting through the more than 275,000 files in the family Dropbox or calling him directly to ask.



His solution was to start his own software company, Leafplanner. It acts as an overlay to existing financial software like Addepar, which tracks multiasset portfolio performance, or Arch, which organizes tax documents. Leafplanner can guide family members through the process of getting answers to specific questions on everything from investment decisions to charitable giving. It can be customized for an unlimited number of users, controlling access to what information each can see. Since launching in 2022, Leafplanner has installed the software for 145 other families, Kanter says. As for his own family, he says, they no longer have to ask, “What happens if Josh is the next one to get hit by a bus?”

Group of business people, bank managers, bankers having meeting, discussion on global planning and financial research. Help, advisory, financial services, support and investment strategy concept

Why You No Longer Need To Be A Billionaire To Have Your Own Family Office

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



The billionaire founder of Telegram is offering to pay for the in vitro fertilization process of medically eligible women who are interested in having a baby using his sperm at a fertility clinic in Moscow, the latest billionaire to speak openly about his desire to widely reproduce.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/pavel-durov/?list=rtb/">Pavel Durov</a>, worth an estimated $15.5 billion as of Tuesday, is offering to cover the cost of IVF treatment for interested, healthy women under the age of 38 who will use his sperm to have a baby using the Altra Vita IVF clinic, which claims it has the exclusive right to store and use his biomaterial.



The clinic&nbsp;<a href="https://altravita-ivf.com/free-ivf-with-pavel-durov-donated-sperm.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">describes</a>&nbsp;the offer as &#8220;a very generous contribution to society&#8221; from &#8220;one of the most famous and successful entrepreneurs of our time.&#8221;



In July,&nbsp;<a href="https://t.me/durov/339" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Durov said</a>&nbsp;he&#8217;s had more than 100 biological children in 12 countries via sperm bank donations he&#8217;s made over the last 15 years, and announced his plan to &#8220;open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily.&#8221;



He said he was once told by someone at an IVF clinic it was his &#8220;civic duty&#8221; to donate sperm to help couples trying to conceive, and said he now wants to &#8220;destigmatize&#8221; the notion of sperm donation and encourage more healthy men to do so.



He also has five children with two ex-girlfriends.



Durov was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/26/officials-confirm-arrest-of-billionaire-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-in-france-heres-what-we-know/">arrested in France</a>&nbsp;in August and has been forbidden to leave the country as authorities investigate charges of enabling criminal activity on his messaging app, including claims he allowed drug trafficking, fraud and the sharing of child pornography.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Durov, 40, and his older brother developed Telegram, a secure messaging app with more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/26/officials-confirm-arrest-of-billionaire-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-in-france-heres-what-we-know/">950 million</a>&nbsp;users, in 2013. He left his home country of Russia—where Telegram was banned from 2018 to 2021—after refusing to provide encrypted data on users of the first social networking site he founded, called VKontakte. He became a French citizen in 2021 but lived in Dubai, where he was once the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/billionaires/world-billionaires/meet-pavel-durov-the-richest-and-youngest-billionaire-living-in-the-middle-east" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">youngest and richest</a>&nbsp;billionaire in the Middle East, until his August arrest.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/26/officials-confirm-arrest-of-billionaire-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-in-france-heres-what-we-know/">His arrest</a>&nbsp;is part of an investigation into Telegram’s content moderation practices and comes amid claims the app has not properly cooperated with law enforcement when the app is used for criminal activity, particularly child sex crimes. A month after his arrest,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/23/telegram-illegal-content-pavel-durov-arrest" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Durov said</a>&nbsp;Telegram had removed “problematic content” and would take a more proactive approach going forward in complying with government requests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Durov isn’t the only high-profile sperm donor who’s been open about his desire to widely reproduce. Last year, courts had to order Dutch crypto investor and YouTuber&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/04/29/dutch-court-orders-superdonor-to-stop-donating-sperm_6024754_4.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jonathan Meijer</a>&nbsp;to stop donating sperm after he was suspected of fathering more than 550 children. Kyle Gordy, who was featured in the documentary &#8220;The Man with 1000 Kids,&#8221; told Netflix he thinks he has about 70 children via sperm donation. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has 10 children with three different women, at least&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexzhavoronkov/2022/07/27/elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-make-their-babies-via-ivf-and-surrogatesis-it-a-future-of-reproduction/">five of which</a>&nbsp;were conceived using IVF. He has said that he believes in vitro fertilization is a more efficient way to have children, and has called a collapsing birth rate the &#8220;biggest danger civilization faces by far.” Billionaire and president-elect Donald Trump earlier this year said he would support public funding for in vitro fertilization or mandate it be covered by insurance, which could broaden the use of procedures that can currently cost tens of thousands of dollars.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">Forbes Valuation</h2>



Durov was ranked as the 141st richest person in the world Tuesday with a net worth of $15.5 billion.

Telegram Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov

Billionaire Pavel Durov Offering Free IVF To Women Willing To Have His Baby

The only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton overtook French heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers on Wednesday morning.



With Walmart stock&nbsp;at an all-time high, Alice Walton–the only daughter of the retail giant’s founder Sam Walton (d. 1992)–just became the world’s wealthiest woman for the first time since May 2022. With an estimated $89.1 billion fortune, Walton, 74, overtook L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France, who briefly became the first female centibillionaire in June and is now worth an estimated $88.4 billion.



Walton now ranks as the 18th richest person in the world, according to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;real-time tracker, one spot behind her brother Rob Walton. Walmart stock is up 47% year to date, while L’Oreal is down 13% during the same period.



Despite selling more than $22 billion of Walmart stock over the past decade—and giving away more than $11 billion of the retailer’s shares—Sam Walton’s heirs still own nearly 46% of the firm their father founded, due to significant stock buybacks that have prevented the family’s stake from being diluted.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that three-quarters of the clan’s stock is split evenly between Alice Walton and her siblings Jim and Rob Walton, who are worth $95.9 billion and $94.2 billion as of 9:15 am Eastern time Wednesday, respectively. Most of the rest belongs to the heirs of their brother John Walton (d. 2005): his widow Christy Walton and son Lukas Walton, who are worth $16.4 billion and $33.9 billion, respectively.



Rob Walton retired from Walmart’s board in June after more than four decades as a director, including more than 20 years as chairman–a role that has been held by his son-in-law Greg Penner since 2015. Jim Walton was replaced by his son Steuart Walton on the retailer’s board in 2016 and now chairs the family’s Arvest Bank.



Alice Walton, meanwhile, worked briefly at Walmart as a buyer of children’s clothes, after graduating from Trinity University in Texas in 1971, before shifting her focus to curating art. She chaired the family’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in their hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas for a decade, before handing the reins to her nephew Tom Walton’s wife, Olivia Walton, in 2021. Alice Walton is credited with founding the museum, though almost all of the $1.6 billion it cost to open the facility in 2011 came from trusts in the names of her brother John Walton (d. 2005) and mother Helen Walton (d. 2007).



Alice Walton has ramped up her personal philanthropy over the last decade, pouring more than $5.7 billion into five family charitable foundations that have doled out more than $1.1 billion of her funds to date, including more than $377 million her Art Bridges Foundation has spent acquiring and loaning out works of American art to more than 230 museums across the country since its founding in 2016. Her new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine–a stand-alone entity–plans to welcome its inaugural class to Bentonville in 2025.



“Over the past several years, I’ve founded new organizations focused on the arts as well as health and well-being,” Walton said in a press release announcing her retirement as chair of Crystal Bridges in 2021. “I’d like to focus more fully on my board chair roles at these entities.”

Walmart Holds Annual Multi-Day Shareholders Meeting In Arkansas

Alice Walton Just Became The World’s Wealthiest Woman

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Larry Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire chairman, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the second-richest person in the world as Oracle’s shares surged again Monday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Ellison—who holds roughly 40% of Oracle’s shares—has a net worth of about $206 billion as of around 2:45 p.m. EDT after an increase of $8.3 billion (4.2%),&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#79eecf883d78">according</a>&nbsp;to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list.



Shares of Oracle have increased by nearly 5% to over $170, boosting Ellison’s net worth, while Amazon shares fell slightly (0.6%), subtracting about $1.6 billion from Bezos’ net worth of $203.4 billion.



Ellison now only trails Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $250.7 billion fortune for the title of the world’s richest person, while Bezos now ranks just ahead of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg ($183.5 billion).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$34 billion. That’s how much Ellison’s fortune has increased since reaching $172 billion on Sept. 6, when Ellison was ranked as the world’s fifth-wealthiest person.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Oracle’s stock has jumped 21% over the last five trading sessions after releasing a strong earnings report and guidance last week, surpassing analyst expectations. The cloud software firm also announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services, adding to earlier deals with Google and Microsoft. Oracle’s rally has swelled Ellison’s wealth, propelling the company’s 80-year-old chairman ahead of Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault, the LVMH chief executive and Europe’s richest man. Ellison is set to become the controlling shareholder of CBS parent Paramount once David Ellison, Larry’s son and Skydance Media’s CEO, completes a takeover of the firm.

Rebels With A Cause Gala 2019

Larry Ellison Becomes World’s Second-Richest Again—Passing Jeff Bezos

Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 – Day Three

The Top 10 Richest People In The World (September 2024)

Billionaire Elon Musk Receives Axel Springer Award

The Top 10 Richest People In The World (July 2024)

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



A Swiss court sentenced four members of the billionaire Hinduja family to up to four-and-a-half years in prison on Friday, after they were found guilty of exploiting household staff at their Lake Geneva home, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/06/17/billionaire-hinduja-family-accused-of-confiscating-staff-passports-forcing-18-hour-work-days/">forcing them to work 18-hour</a>&nbsp;days for low pay, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/21/british-billionaire-hindujas-sentenced-to-jail-in-swiss-exploitation-case" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">multiple</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ggl6pe52eo" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reports</a>—though members of the family were acquitted on human trafficking charges.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Prakash Hinduja and his wife Kamal were sentenced to four and a half years in prison, while their son Ajay and his wife Namrata received four-year sentences after they were each found guilty of exploitation and illegal employment.



Workers at the Hinduja family’s Lake Geneva home alleged they were paid $8 for an entire 18-hour shift, an amount less than one-tenth required under Swiss law.



The family members faced criminal charges of human trafficking for allegations they illegally brought the household staff in and out of Switzerland after confiscating their passports and prevented them from leaving the Swiss property.



Human trafficking charges against the Hinduja family were dropped after the court&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/hinduja-switzerland-geneva-human-trafficking-exploitation-india-b0a40f9872ea096c4722754c1267490b" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;ruled the staff partially understood what was happening to them.



Attorneys representing the four family members said they would appeal the court’s decision, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ggl6pe52eo" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">BBC</a>,



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



The Hinduja family has an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/hinduja/">estimated net worth</a>&nbsp;of $20 billion as of October, and was ranked 7th on Forbes’ list of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/india-billionaires/">India’s Richest</a>&nbsp;last year. The family controls the Hinduja group, a multinational conglomerate founded in 1914 with interests in shipping, banking and media. Most of the family’s fortune is generated from the group’s investments across sectors like oil, healthcare and real estate, after several decades of trading goods in India. Prakash and Kamal live in Monaco, and the family owns real estate in London—including the Raffles London hotel—and Mumbai.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Some of the household staff filed civil suits against the Hinduja family, alleging they were exploited while working at the Lake Geneva home. The workers settled with the family earlier this week, though the terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Swiss prosecutor Yves Bertossa <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/hindujas-spent-more-on-pet-dog-than-they-paid-a-servant-swiss-prosecutor-says" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a> alleged the family spent more money on their family dog than they did on the workers, whose contracts didn’t specify working hours or days off. The Hinduja family denied the claims, while family attorney Romain Jordan said the Swiss prosecutors had a “fantasized” version of events, according to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-07/hinduja-family-human-trafficking-case-puts-unwelcome-spotlight-on-geneva-elite" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>.

Opening Day Of The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2017

Billionaire Hinduja Family Members Get 4.5 Years In Swiss Prison For Exploiting House Staff

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Amazon founder Jeff Bezos overtook French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault as the second-wealthiest person in the world Monday morning after LVMH’s shares fell and Amazon shares slightly increased—and the pair continued to flip-flop throughout the day for the title.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Bezos had a net worth of about $204.3 billion as of just after 4 p.m. EDT on Monday—an increase of about $2.4 billion on the day—according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#76751fb33d78">Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List</a>.



Arnault, who oversees the LVMH empire of luxury fashion and cosmetics brands like Louis Vuitton and Sephora, was just behind Bezos with a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#76751fb33d78">net worth</a>&nbsp;of $203.9 billion, down $4.3 billion as of 4 p.m.



Shares of Arnault’s LVMH were down 2.21% at market close Monday, while Amazon shares were up 1.5%, helping Bezos’ net worth slightly increase.



The wealthiest person in the world remains Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who Forbes estimates to have a net worth of $207.8 billion as of Monday afternoon.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



How the pair continues to flip throughout the day. As of 4 p.m., Bezos and Arnault had swapped the No. 2 and No. 3 spots at least four times.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The top of our billionaires tracker has seen a number of changes in recent weeks. Prior to Bezos passing Arnault, Musk and Arnault were jostling for the position of wealthiest person in the world. Amazon is trading up more than 6% over the last three months, while Tesla is up only 0.39% and LVMH has fallen 12.99% over the same period. Musk’s fortune has fluctuated this year as Tesla stock has struggled, but Musk could run away with the No. 1 spot if Tesla shareholders vote to reinstate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/06/05/tesla-shareholders-vote-on-elon-musks-50-billion-pay-package-next-week-heres-whats-at-stake/?sh=71173676fa42">his $50 billion pay package</a>&nbsp;on Thursday, which would increase his equity in Tesla from 13% to 22%.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tannget">TANNGET</h2>



Earlier this year, Bezos was going back and forth with Musk for the position of second-wealthiest person in the world and wealthiest in the U.S. The pair swapped spots <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2024/03/28/jeff-bezos-overtakes-elon-musk-as-richest-person-in-the-us-13th-flip-flop-this-month/?sh=4f85db26488f">13 times</a> in March, and prior to that, Musk had <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/03/06/jeff-bezos-briefly-overtakes-elon-musk-as-us-richest-person/?sh=48c7a574111a">not lost</a> his status as the richest person in the U.S. for more than two years.

Amazon CEO And Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos  Speaks At Air Force Association Air, Space And Cyber Conference

Jeff Bezos Tops Bernard Arnault For World’s 2nd Richest Person, Behind Elon Musk

Jerry Jones paid $150 million for the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. Just the team’s brand is now worth $1.73 billion, the most in sports. 



The Dallas Cowboys were a dying brand when Jerry Jones paid $150 million for the NFL team and the operating rights to its stadium in 1989. Three Super Bowls—1992, 1993, 1995—a new stadium, a ton of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/jerry-jones-dallas-peter-king-rumors-ccontroversy-bad-news-publicity-billion" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">publicity</a>&nbsp;over the course of 35 years and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.samford.edu/sports-analytics/fans/2022/Die-Hard-or-Fair-Weather-Fans-Ranking-All-32-NFL-Fan-Bases" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">largest fan base</a>&nbsp;in the NFL has the Cowboys valued at $9 billion and the name of the team alone worth $1.73 billion—the most in team sports. It’s been a long time since the Cowboys played for the Lombardi Trophy, but Jones&nbsp;<a href="https://www.managingip.com/article/2a5ch91g842powa8owiyo/jerry-jones-dallas-cowboys-the-business-of-branding" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">created the template</a>&nbsp;for branding in sports.



Can you quantify the value of a sports team brand? We think our proprietary model gets pretty close, or at least provides a reasonable way to measure brands on in an equal, mathematical way. Our team brand values measure the portion of the team’s enterprise value not attributable to the size or demographics of the team’s market, the venue or league-shared revenue. In essence, Forbes’ proprietary formula of team brand values quantifies how much of its worth is over-and-above what the typical team in the same league and similar market is worth (as derived from a multiple of revenue).



Take stadium sponsorships and advertising, for example. The Cowboys rake in over $260 million from these sources during 2022 at AT&amp;T Stadium versus an average of about $65 million for other big market teams that control their stadiums like the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans. Our brand calculation counts roughly $130 million of the Cowboys sponsorship and advertising revenue towards the value of its brand.



In basketball, the Los Angeles Lakers brand take the top spot with a brand value of $1 billion. The Lakers generated over $160 million from their local media rights during the 2022-23 season, some $20 million more than the New York Knicks and more than double what the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls earned. The Lakers local media rights are worth $20 million in brand value.



Winning Champions League trophies is what Real Madrid is<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCWX_C66Udo" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;all about</a>, and a big reason the Spanish side, which recently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/kylian-mbappe-real-madrid-shirt-number-b2555695.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">signed</a>&nbsp;superstar Kylian Mbappe, are the world’s most valuable brand among soccer teams. One big payoff for the team’s brand is having the most valuable kit and front-of-jersey deals in soccer, worth a combined average of $207 million per season. Of that $207 million, our formula applies $52 million to Real Madrid’s brand value.



To get the most valuable sports team brands we culled our data base of MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA and soccer teams based on our most recent team valuations for each league. The ten most valuable brands, listed in the table below, is dominated by soccer, which comprises four teams. That is not hard to understand given soccer is the most global team sport in the world. No NHL or MLS teams made our top 10 list because their revenue, and thus by extension brand values, are too low.

Jamal Murray Attends Melbourne NBA Store Opening

The World’s Most Valuable Sports Team Brands

Villarreal v Real Madrid CF – La Liga EA Sports

The World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams 2024

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos, who has an estimated net worth of $199.6 billion, is once again the second-wealthiest person in the world as of Thursday, overtaking Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has an estimated net worth of $197.4 billion, and marking the second switch of the week for the battling billionaires.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="777" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1387431806.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-54750" style="width:602px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1387431806.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1387431806-300x228.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1387431806-768x583.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">(Photo by Christian Marquardt &#8211; Pool/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Bezos overtook Musk Thursday after losing his position as wealthiest person in the U.S. to him on Monday, following a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/04/29/musk-passes-bezos-as-richest-american-again-as-tesla-stock-soars/?sh=6aca45993bdf">surge in Tesla stock</a>&nbsp;that vaulted Musk above Bezos and made him about $25 billion richer than he was just six days prior.



Bezos’ estimated net worth was up about $2.5 billion on Thursday at noon EDT, while Musk’s fortune had fallen about $276 million, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#30559b653d78">Forbes Real-Time Billionaire List</a>.



The wealthiest person in the world is still LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, who was worth an estimated $206.9 billion as of Thursday morning.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



1.84%. That’s how much Amazon’s stock was up at noon EDT on Thursday. Tesla’s share price, in comparison, was up about 0.08%.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The two billionaires have been going back-and-forth for the position of second wealthiest person in the world for months—they flip-flopped&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2024/03/28/jeff-bezos-overtakes-elon-musk-as-richest-person-in-the-us-13th-flip-flop-this-month/?sh=50da75a0488f">at least 13 times</a>&nbsp;in March. But, before March, Musk had steadily held the first or second spots on the list: March 6 was the first time since Aug. 19, 2021 that he placed outside of the top two in Forbes’ real-time billionaire rankings. Bezos had a resurgence of wealth earlier this year and Musk’s wealth has fluctuated as Tesla—which just announced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/04/30/tesla-fires-supercharger-team-musk-says-network-will-grow-at-slower-pace/?sh=255a15281644">hundreds more cuts</a>&nbsp;among its staff this week—has struggled, leading to the ongoing back-and-forth.

Jeff Bezos’s India Visit Marked By Probe and Protests

Jeff Bezos Overtakes Elon Musk As Second Wealthiest Person In The World

World Economic Forum 2024: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI Made Sam Altman Famous. His Investments Made Him A Billionaire.

A record year for ten-figure wealth has left the billionaire class bigger and richer than ever.



What a year it’s been for the planet’s billionaires, whose fortunes continue to swell as global stock markets shrug off war, political unrest and lingering inflation. There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They’re richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021. 



Two-thirds of the list’s members are worth more than a year ago; only one fourth are poorer. Much of the gains come from the top 20, who added a combined $700 billion in wealth since 2023, and from the U.S., which now boasts a record 813 billionaires worth a combined $5.7 trillion. China remains second, with 473 (including Hong Kong) worth $1.7 trillion, despite weak consumer spending and a real estate bust that helped wipe out some $300 billion in wealth. India, which has 200 billionaires (also a record), ranks third. 



To calculate net worths, we used stock prices and exchange rates from March 8, 2024. See below for the full list of the world’s billionaires and our methodology. For daily updated net worths of all 2,781 billionaires, check out our&nbsp;<a href="http://forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">real-time billionaires rankings</a>.

Most Attractive Youtube Thumbnail (10)

FORBES WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES LIST: The Richest in 2024

Globe-trotting billionaire Mo Dewji made a fortune in East Africa selling palm oil, rope, and soda. Now he claims to have the recipe for transforming Tanzania into an agribusiness powerhouse.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Puffing on a nicotine vape and seated on a white leather chair in his $50 million home in Dubai, Mohammed “Mo” Dewji is waxing poetic about his plans to mechanize farming 2,500 miles away. “I want to make Africa, long term, a food basket for the world,” says the 48-year-old billionaire, who was born, raised and until recently lived in Tanzania. A framed photograph of a street in Zanzibar, the Tanzanian archipelago famous for lush white beaches, hangs on a wall behind him. “Why the hell are we not investing in agri?”



Dewji is well known in Tanzania, Africa’s fifth largest country with a population of 70 million. The football team owner and former politician controls a range of businesses through his consumer goods conglomerate MeTL Group, including textile manufacturing, edible oil refineries and his Mo Cola carbonated beverages line (named after himself). MeTL already grows crops like tea, avocados, and sisal (a natural fiber used in rope), which are vertically integrated into his other businesses.



Now Dewji wants to grow his agribusiness empire – by orders of magnitude. He is seeking to invest $250 million, including $100 million of his own capital, to buy and mechanize 100,000 hectares of farmland in Tanzania. MeTL would use the crops to feed its own businesses, then sell the surpluses to other Tanzanian firms, African countries and even European customers. Dewji says this “vision” came to him in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as soaring food and fertilizer prices worsened conditions of poverty and malnutrition in Africa.



Agriculture accounts for one-third of Tanzania’s annual GDP (of $75 billion), but roughly 90% of that farming is done by subsistence farmers tilling less than 5 hectares of land each. As a result, food insecurity in Tanzania is widespread: Over 30% of children are stunted, and 13 million Tanzanians live in extreme poverty, while “many others live just above the poverty line,” <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/Copy_of_tagged_Tanzania-Nutrition-Profile.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to </a>the U.S. Agency for International Development. That’s despite Tanzania being the second biggest receiver of foreign aid in Sub-Saharan Africa (behind only Ethiopia) between 1990 to 2010, <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2012-037.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">receiving </a>$26.85 billion. One of those aid suppliers, the World Bank, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2024/01/05/ida-and-afe-tanzania-a-focus-on-people-cities-and-public-institutions-for-a-better-future#:~:text=As%20of%20August%202023%2C%20the,projects%20(%241.04%20billion%20commitments)." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acknowledges</a> that Tanzania “still faces stubbornly high levels of poverty, in part as a result of dependence on low productivity agriculture.”



Bigger, more efficient farms could help solve Tanzania’s hunger problem. In developing countries, “Larger farms tend to be more efficient than their smaller counterparts,” a recent European Commission <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7546703/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">paper</a> found. Within Africa, increasing agricultural productivity was “a substantial driver of growth and poverty reduction” in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda—in contrast to Tanzania and those countries where farming growth lagged, according to a UN <a href="https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/done-sensibly-agricultural-development-can-reduce-poverty-in-africa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>. But agribusiness also comes with costs: human displacement, environmental degradation, disruption of local trading networks upending entire communities. Dewji says the benefits outweigh the cons. “Life goes on for the villagers but [in] a much better scenario,” he says.



Given Dewji’s prominence, any success—or failure—will have a big impact within Tanzania and potentially beyond. “This is larger than Tanzania: a success here could have implications for the continent as a whole,” says Margaret McMillan, an economics professor at Tufts University who studies economic development in East Africa, has lived in Tanzania and heard Dewji make his agribusiness pitch at a recent conference. “If he could use it as a flagship to show how [large-scale farming] can be done successfully, that would be amazing.”



That is Dewji’s long-term plan. He wants to prove his agribusiness model works in Tanzania, then raise money from global investors to replicate it in other African countries. His dream is to invest over $1 billion across 400,000 hectares—about the size of Rhode Island, or 0.3% of Tanzania’s total landmass—across at least three countries, including Zambia and Mozambique. “I spoke to the Zambian president, I spoke to the Mozambique president,” Dewji assured&nbsp;Forbes. “But I said, ‘Guys, let me first work it out in my home country first because I understand the intricacies. Let me show a project for Africa.’”



It’s not clear these dreams will come to fruition. Dewji has been trying to get this operation going for years. Eighteen months ago, he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/tanzanian-entrepreneur-dewji-plans-2-4-bln-grains-production-investment-via-spac-2022-07-08/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">sought&nbsp;</a>four times as much money, $4 billion, to fund an even larger version. He floated the idea of raising money by merging with a special purpose acquisition company and touted potential 10x returns. No partners came calling. “I never raised money because I failed to get the land,” he says.



Dewji has praised Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s president since 2021, for promoting more investment and private sector activity. Yet he has spent two years trying to buy 100,000 hectares of Tanzanian land from Hassan’s administration, and the deal isn’t done yet. The land is occupied by villagers and small-scale farmers but is technically owned by Tanzania’s government.



Documents seen by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;describe a key pillar of his proposal: cultivating sugar cane and building a sugar refinery on 39,000 hectares in Tanzania’s Rufiji District, a rural region named after Tanzania’s largest river. Some 95,000 people live in the area,&nbsp;<a href="https://rufijidc.go.tz/statistics" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">scattered across</a>&nbsp;200 villages and hamlets. MeTL’s acquisition would involve land transfers in 17 villages and the factory would sit on a 860-hectare plot, according to the documents.



Dewji told Forbes that, eventually, he wants to grow grains (wheat, rice, corn), edible oil crops (sunflowers, soybeans, palm), and plant proteins (pigeon peas, yellow gram) on the other 61,000 hectares of land he’d like to acquire.



There have been accusations of land-grabbing, and no wonder. Dewji wants to become Tanzania&#8217;s biggest farmer in a single stroke. “Not many people live on the targeted land,” he says, but when asked how many people live there, he declines to say. The village councils and district authorities are on-board with MeTL’s plans, Dewji adds. That hasn’t alleviated concerns about corruption.



“There&#8217;s a pretty widespread perception that the government is underhanded in these large-scale transactions, that agreements are not above board,” says Ayala Wineman, a professor of agricultural and food economics at Michigan State University who has researched Tanzania and East Africa. “And oftentimes, it&#8217;s with the collaboration of local leaders who benefit from agreeing to hand over land.”



Dewji says that any villagers and subsistence farmers displaced by MeTL will get new land to continue their farming and animal husbandry, that there will be buffer zones between his operations and their new tracts, and that MeTL will fund new roads, hospitals, schools and running water systems. The documents seen by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;promise all that and more, including annual dividends paid to local coffers and giveaways like new tractors.&nbsp;“MeTL has been extremely sensitive,” says Dewji, who calls it a “win-win” proposition.



He’ll need to defy recent history, then.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207398120#sec-1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">A research paper</a>&nbsp;published last year analyzed four separate large-scale land purchases in Tanzania for the purposes of agribusiness. It found that the takeovers “exacerbate farmland inequality in nearby villages” and caused “resulting inequalities [that] are not offset by improvements in other dimensions of well-being.” These local populations are “not really benefiting from these projects in any meaningful way, be it employment, the adoption of new farming practices, improvement in food security, [or] incomes,” says Jonathan Sullivan, the study’s lead author and a professor of sustainability at the University of Arizona. “Maybe Mohammed Dewji is going to do something different, but I imagine it&#8217;s going to be pretty similar.”



And yet—Tanzania needs more food. Mechanized farming of staple goods like grains and proteins – as Dewji has proposed – could help feed hungry mouths through sheer economies of scale, improved efficiencies and surpluses. “In rural Tanzania, there is a lot of food acquired through purchase,” explains Wineman. “Subsistence farmers also engage with the market to access the food they need.”



If MeTL exports crops to other countries, as Dewji envisions, Tanzania’s budget will see some of that money. “Presumably, it could generate tax revenue for the government and foreign exchange earnings,” says McMillan, hitting on two key structural issues with Tanzania’s economy: its annual trade deficits and shrinking foreign exchange reserves. Above all, perhaps, private capital should get the chance to succeed where foreign aid has failed. One consultant for the World Bank, who spoke with&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;on the condition of anonymity, described the bank’s loans and investments in Tanzania (which total&nbsp;<a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2024/01/05/ida-and-afe-tanzania-a-focus-on-people-cities-and-public-institutions-for-a-better-future#:~:text=As%20of%20August%202023%2C%20the,projects%20(%241.04%20billion%20commitments)." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$8.3 billion</a>) as “moderately helpful at best.”



If anyone could pull off such an audacious venture, it’s probably Dewji, a man steeped in global ambition and daring, at times dangerous entrepreneurship. His great grandfather, born in Gujarat, India, was one of thousands of Indian Muslims who migrated to East Africa in the 1800s. His father started MeTL in the 1970s as a commodities trading firm. Dewji studied political science at Georgetown and after a brief stint on Wall Street, returned to Tanzania in 1999 to help run the family business. He grew MeTL through a series of deals in the 2000s as Tanzania privatized loss-making state-owned enterprises. He served in his country’s parliament for a decade, between 2005 to 2015—while simultaneously running MeTL. He owns a 49% stake in Simba S.C., a professional football club in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. He frequently posts photos of himself at matches to his 4.4 million followers.



But what Dewji is most famous for is being kidnapped in October 2018 by a group of armed men in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam. The assailants kept Dewji for 10 days and demanded ransom, but in a strange twist, they released him in an abandoned field without ever receiving any payment, and no assailants were ever found guilty in a Tanzanian court of any criminal charges.



Who was behind this odd sequence of events? Two well-placed individuals told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it was widely rumored that Tanzania’s then-President John Magufuli had orchestrated the kidnapping in connection to a dispute with Dewji about MeTL’s massive sisal holdings (sisal is a fibrous plant used to make rope, carpet, shoes and paper). Dewji told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that the kidnapping was “&#8217;politically motivated,” but did not provide further detail, other than that he never paid a ransom. “There’s parts of the puzzle I cannot speak about,” he said in a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjPSQEsUudg" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">podcast interview</a>&nbsp;about the kidnapping, calling the whole event “a paradox.”



Dewji attributes his good fortune to the prayers of ordinary Tanzanians, like those who buy Mo Cola in Dar es Salaam, or those who till the land that he hopes to buy one day. “The poor of the poorest people were praying for me,” Dewji says. “I&#8217;ll tell you something: I am indebted to Tanzanians, to Africans.”

Key Speakers on Day Two of The Qatar Economic Forum

Tanzania’s Richest Man Wants To Be Africa’s Biggest Farmer — If Everyone Gets Out Of His Way

Elon Musk’s lack of transparency in updates about his brain implant company Neuralink flouts scientific and ethical norms, raises questions about patient safety and risks setting back the entire field of neurotechnology, experts told Forbes, after the billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/02/20/elon-musk-says-neuralinks-first-brain-chip-patient-can-control-computer-mouse-by-thought/?sh=e072a8d298e2">touted early success&nbsp;</a>in the company’s first human patient last week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



“What truly puzzles me about this is not the technology itself but the way of communicating scientific news,” said Marcello Ienca, a professor of ethics of AI and neuroscience at Technical University of Munich, who stressed information about Neuralink and its work is being disseminated “through casual social media updates” rather than traditional outlets for science like peer reviewed publications, public repositories or even simple pre-prints.



It “seems to sidestep the established protocols that underpin scientific integrity,” Ienca said, preventing experts from evaluating or understanding “the full scope and impact” of any claimed advances.



“A tweet is not exactly a peer-reviewed scientific report,” said L. Syd M Johnson, an ethicist at SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities, adding that Musk’s brief update gave few details on the patient’s recovery, what degree of control they have over the mouse or whether “mouse” actually meant the onscreen cursor.



Most clinical trials are also registered in the public database ClinicalTrials.gov for the sake of transparency, accountability and the benefit of science, said Laura Cabrera, a neuroethicist at Pennsylvania State University’s Rock Ethics Institute, who called for the creation of “more rigorous ways” to hold companies operating in the space accountable, transparent and to make them follow similar reporting standards to federally funded trials.



While it isn’t illegal for Neuralink to not have registered its clinical trial, Ienca said not doing so “violates fundamental ethical guidelines for biomedical research”—notably the Declaration of Helsinki, a cornerstone statement of ethical principles for medical research involving humans—adding that Neuralink hasn’t communicated setting up any internal ethics board or establishing its own code of ethics and has not engaged in any major activities from policy organizations working in the space like the OECD.



Neuralink did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Ienca accused Neuralink of endangering the entire field of neurotechnology over its opacity and failure to outline its position on important ethical and social issues related to its work while charging ahead with human research. “If you decide to play with fire in a house, you increase the risk threshold not only of yourself but of the whole house,” he said. “My fear is that Neuralink&#8217;s disregard for the ethical aspects of their technology may cause a backfire effect for the entire neurotechnology community.” Ienca warned the potential backlash could slow down the development of a technological innovation that could help millions of people with neuropsychiatric disorders and mental illness, many of whom cannot be cured or even treated effectively with current technology. Given the stakes, “we cannot afford a “Cambridge Analytica” scandal involving the human brain,” Ienca said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news-peg">NEWS PEG</h2>



Neuralink secured&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/09/19/elon-musks-neuralink-wants-volunteers-for-first-human-trial-of-its-brain-implant-chip/">permission</a>&nbsp;in September to recruit patients to test its implantable brain device’s ability to help people with paralysis regain lost functions by controlling computers with their thoughts. Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/01/30/elon-musk-teases-first-neuralink-products-after-company-implants-first-brain-chip-in-human/?sh=f3489562ac39">announced</a>&nbsp;the first patient had received the implant in January and last week&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/02/20/elon-musk-says-neuralinks-first-brain-chip-patient-can-control-computer-mouse-by-thought/?sh=e072a8d298e2">said</a>&nbsp;they appeared to have made a full recovery and could move a mouse around a screen “just by thinking.” The Tesla billionaire delivered both updates through informal posts on X, the social media platform Musk controversially acquired as Twitter in 2022. Musk has teased that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/01/30/elon-musk-teases-first-neuralink-products-after-company-implants-first-brain-chip-in-human/">Neuralink’s first products</a>&nbsp;will include “Telepathy,” which would allow users to control a phone or computer “just by thinking,” as well as features that could restore sight to blind people. Musk has also been open on his long term aims for Neuralink and hopes the technology will be used more widely to enhance memory and elevate intelligence and ultimately acting as a foil to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/09/21/elon-musk-says-neuralink-could-slash-risk-from-ai-as-firm-prepares-for-first-human-trials/?sh=300741eb2956">risks of artificial intelligence</a>. The company has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">criticized</a>&nbsp;over its use of animals in experiments and questions have been raised over the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neuralink-elon-musk-animal-testing-conflict-of-interest-researcher-says-2023-5?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">independence</a>&nbsp;of a regulatory board governing its animal research. The company has denied any wrongdoing and&nbsp;<a href="https://neuralink.com/blog/neuralink-s-commitment-to-animal-welfare/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stressed</a>&nbsp;it is “committed to working with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



In line with other experts Forbes spoke to, Columbia&nbsp;<a href="https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/need-protect-data-our-brains" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">neurobiologist</a>&nbsp;Rafael Yuste said the announcement of Neuralink’s progress is “not news.” It is only reported as such because “a company associated with Elon Musk” is doing it,” he said, pointing to decades of research and numerous&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/06/05/elon-musks-neuralink-wants-to-put-chips-in-our-brains---how-it-works-and-who-else-is-doing-it/?sh=d573533babb9">other companies operating&nbsp;</a>in the neurotech field. Yuste said he had “zero concerns” over Neuralink’s latest experiment. It involves a medical device that “has to be approved by the FDA” and “the data collected are protected with HIPAA,” he explained, referring to the series of federal laws governing protected health information. “I welcome anyone who wants to develop medical devices to help patients,” he said. Cabrera expressed a similar sentiment and said it’s unlikely we will need new rights to govern the medical uses of neurotechnology as these should already be well covered by existing regulation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



While medical uses of neurotechnology may be well covered by existing regulation, Yuste warned “commercial neurotechnology is completely unregulated.” The growing sector—which includes non-implantable tech like external sensors—raises a host of social, legal and ethical&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24078512/brain-tech-privacy-rights-neurorights-colorado-yuste" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">questions</a>&nbsp;surrounding privacy, access and freedom of thought, demands a framework of rights to govern neurotechnology and protect human rights from potential abuse or misuse from it (Yuste and others call this framework “<a href="https://neurorightsfoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">neurorights</a>”). The use, and potential exploitation, of the vast amounts of brain data generated from implants and sensors is of particular concern, experts warned. Neuralink stands out as a neurotech company that such considerations could apply to, although this would still be a long way in the future. “Neuralink is the only neurotechnology company, to my knowledge, that has publicly confessed that their long-term goal is the development of implantable neurotechnology for human enhancement,” Ienca said. In principle, Ienca said there’s nothing wrong with enhancement—tools that augment or add brain functions like memory or vision for healthy individuals and go beyond natural capabilities—but warned there’s a real risk of creating a “stratified society divided not just by wealth or opportunity, but by cognitive and sensory capabilities.” Johnson, on the other hand, said enhancement “would not change anything.” The wealthy would “have the same advantages and power” as they do now.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-don-t-know">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



Experts told Forbes it is unclear what will happen to Neuralink’s human subjects once the clinical trial for the brain implant is over. “When the clinical trial is over, are they on their own?,” Johnson asked, pointing to the many risks involved with the kind of surgery to place an implant, the possibility the device or performance could degrade over time and the fact that some may simply lose access to their implant once the trial is over.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



“Musk’s talk about helping disabled people – giving full body functionality to tetraplegics – is disingenuous and harmful,” Johnson said, asking whether disabled people even want brain implants or to control smartphones with their thoughts. “It fundamentally says that disabled persons are broken and need to be fixed with invasive brain implants,” Johnson said, noting that there is “so much that societies could be doing right now, but are not doing, to improve mobility, and access to jobs and education and decent places to live for disabled persons.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



We <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=1f50a08f7999">estimate</a> Musk to be worth $207 billion. Musk’s fortune makes him the world’s second richest person, behind French luxury goods giant <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a> and ahead of Amazon founder <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=4587e17d1b23">Jeff Bezos</a>, worth $229.6 billion and $195.7 billion, respectively.

Tesla Officially Opens Gruenheide Gigafactory

Experts Criticize Elon Musk’s Neuralink Over Transparency After Billionaire Says First Brain Implant Works

Most Attractive Youtube Thumbnail (2)

Billionaires List: Africa’s Richest People In 2024

A decision by a Delaware judge late Tuesday afternoon has multibillion-dollar implications regarding Musk’s fortune.



Elon Musk ceded the title of world’s richest person to Frenchman Bernard Arnault of luxury conglomerate LVMH Tuesday evening, after a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/01/30/judge-voids-elon-musks-56-billion-pay-package-from-tesla/?sh=7ee4eb102756">Delaware judge</a>&nbsp;voided a hefty package of performance-based Tesla options&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2021/05/06/elon-musk-made-billions-in-2020-every-other-ceo-made-millions/?sh=39b88bdd6f93">awarded to Musk in 2018</a>. Those shares had been worth more than $50 billion.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that Musk is now worth $184.5 billion. He now trails Arnault (estimated net worth: $210.8 billion) but remains ahead of the world’s third richest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($179 billion).



In her ruling, Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick determined that Musk and his co-defendants, Tesla and certain of its board members, failed to prove that the process underlying the award of “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets” was fair due to conflicts of interest and Musk’s “control” over the board. Musk’s options were worth $50.9 billion (net of exercise cost) at Tuesday’s stock market close. Because of the ruling, he won’t be able to exercise or sell them. Given the high level of uncertainty about what comes next–including an appeal of the ruling,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;has discounted Musk’s options by 50%, enough to knock his net worth down by $25.5 billion after the decision.



“[The ruling] will certainly be appealed and there is some chance of reversal or a different remedy,” says UCLA law professor Jim Park. “Chancellor McCormick is well regarded and known as careful, so I think there’s a good chance her decision will get some deference from the Delaware Supreme Court. On the other hand, perhaps the Supreme Court will worry that the decision will send a negative message to the business community and will thus reduce the award.”



There is also the possibility that Tesla could just grant Musk another pay package with a more rigorous process designed to withstand legal scrutiny. After all, Tesla shareholders, whose stock has appreciated more than sevenfold since 2018, haven’t exactly celebrated the decision by the Delaware court. Shares of Tesla were trading down 0.8% at 2:30 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday.



“If the pay package is struck down, Musk will demand another — and he&#8217;ll get it,” says Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard. “But [it’s] very hard to say how different that would be from this package.”



Musk had been clamoring for even more Tesla shares prior to the Delaware decision. In an X post on January 15 he wrote, “I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI &amp; robotics without having ~25% voting control.” If upheld on appeal, the judge&#8217;s decision to void Musk&#8217;s options pay package would drop his stake in Tesla from 22% to 13%.

GERMANY-AUTOMOBILE-TESLA-MUSK

Elon Musk No Longer World’s Richest After Judge Voids $51 Billion Pay Package

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



As shares of Tesla&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sank</a>&nbsp;13% Thursday, a day after the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_2Z-AEtdAg&amp;embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2F&amp;source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&amp;feature=emb_title" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;missed estimates in its fourth-quarter earnings, the net worth of its centibillionare CEO Elon Musk dropped by more than $18 billion, though he remains the richest person in the world.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Tesla stock sank 13.2% to 180.38 on Thursday, with Musk losing $18.8 billion.



The decline followed the company’s Wednesday fourth-quarter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_2Z-AEtdAg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earning report</a>&nbsp;that indicated it&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-stock-plunges-12-as-ev-maker-warns-production-growth-will-be-notably-lower-than-2023-143454161.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">missed several estimates</a>—including that revenue for the quarter was $25.17 billion, compared to an estimated $25.87 billion.



Stocks for fellow American electric car makers&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RIVN?p=RIVN&amp;ncid=yahooproperties_stockrecom_g40boan2td8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rivian</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LCID?p=LCID&amp;ncid=yahooproperties_stockrecom_g40boan2td8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lucid</a>&nbsp;also dropped 1% and 6%, respectively, on Thursday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



Musk lost $18.8 billion Thursday, a more than $17 billion larger decline than any other billionaire, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#62bf5a623d78">Forbes calculations</a>. Musk, who owns about 21% of Tesla, remains the world’s wealthiest person with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?listuri=rtb&amp;sh=430430527999">estimated net worth</a>&nbsp;of $203.6 billion, still roughly $20 billion more than LVMH’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?sh=5900e1fb66fa">Bernard Arnault</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$320 billion. That’s how much Musk was worth in November 2021, first person in history to obtain such a net worth and also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2022/10/21/elon-musks-fortune-has-fallen-by-more-than-100-billion-in-less-than-a-year/?sh=691a348a3ea4">his peak fortune</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2024/01/25/tesla-stock-price-down-25-in-2024-time-to-take-your-profits/?sh=5451e31a701a">With Tesla Stock Down 25% In 2024, It’s Time To Take Your Profits</a> (Forbes)

Elon Musk’s Net Worth Drops $18 Billion As Tesla Stock Slides

The Top 10 Richest People In The World (January 2024)

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that created ChatGPT, is in discussions about a potential share sale that would value it at $80 to $90 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-seeks-new-valuation-of-up-to-90-billion-in-sale-of-existing-shares-ed6229e0?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal—about three times what it was valued in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/01/05/chatgpt-creator-openai-discussing-offer-valuing-company-at-29-billion-report-says/?sh=62fa761311e0">January</a>, as the AI race heats up.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



It’s expected that the deal will let employees sell their shares, instead of OpenAI issuing new ones, the&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.



A valuation of $80 or $90 billion would make OpenAI—which is privately held—one of the highest valued startups, joining the ranks of TikTok owner ByteDance and SpaceX and surpassing companies like Shein and Canva.



OpenAI is positioned to earn more than $1 billion in revenue over the next year by selling access to a higher-quality version of ChatGPT and the technology behind it, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-track-generate-more-than-1-bln-revenue-over-12-months-information-2023-08-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;last month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



OpenAI is backed largely by Microsoft, which owns 49% of the company, according to the&nbsp;Journal. Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/?sh=4173fcd63c0c">expanded</a>&nbsp;its investment earlier this year when it put billions more into OpenAI, and it has begun integrating the company’s AI technology into its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/microsoft-bing-openai-artificial-intelligence.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bing search engine</a>&nbsp;in a bid to compete with Google.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



ChatGPT—OpenAI’s chief product—launched last November and quickly became one of the most popular artificial intelligence programs. Within a week of its launch, the program attracted one million signed-up users who were able to use it for free while the product was in a “research preview” phase. People can still use ChatGPT for free, but OpenAI also offers ChatGPT+ for a $20 per month subscription fee. Beyond normal access to ChatGPT, subscribers get faster response times, are able to use the service even during peak times and get priority access to new features, according to its&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>.



Forbes Daily: Get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day’s news in your inbox every weekday.Sign Up



By signing up, you accept and agree to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/terms-and-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Service</a>&nbsp;(including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Privacy Statement</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



OpenAI backer Microsoft isn’t the only major tech company to invest in artificial intelligence. Google <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/03/21/google-releases-bard-ai-chatbot-amid-competition-with-chatgpt/?sh=769740e832b7">launched</a> its Bard AI chatbot earlier this year, and has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/09/19/google-expands-ai-chatbot-bard-to-apps-like-gmail-drive-and-youtube/?sh=594736544905">begun integrating it</a> into services like Gmail and YouTube, while Amazon announced a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/09/25/amazon-plans-to-invest-up-to-4-billion-in-ai-startup-anthropic/?sh=7408d8aa30e0">$4 billion investment</a> in AI startup Anthropic on Monday.

In this photo illustration a Open AI logo is displayed on a

OpenAI Could Reach Massive $90 Billion Valuation With New Share Sales, Report Says

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Apple and Nvidia stocks tanked for the second consecutive trading session Thursday, a rare down stretch for the Silicon Valley titans this year fueled by concerns about each of their explosive sales.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Apple shares slipped 3.4% by 2:25 p.m. Eastern time after Bloomberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-07/china-plans-to-expand-iphone-ban-to-some-state-backed-firms-in-blow-to-apple?srnd=premium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;China is considering banning iPhone usage among some government workers and employees at state-owned corporations, casting doubt on Apple’s strength in the country which accounts for roughly a fifth of its sales.



The slide comes a day after Apple shed 3.6% – its 6.9% dip since Tuesday marks the steepest two-day loss for the world’s most valuable company since November.



Nvidia shares also dropped about 3% Thursday, bringing its two-day loss to 5.5% as the S&amp;P 500’s best-performer of 2023 suffered a rare tumble.



The artificial intelligence leader’s stock slump came as a dubious conspiracy theory&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JesseCohenInv/status/1699307464619876691" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proliferated&nbsp;</a>on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, suggesting that Nvidia has artificially inflated revenue in its AI segment by lying about its sales to CoreWeave, a Nvidia-backed cloud computing startup&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-30/coreweave-said-to-seek-stake-sale-at-up-to-8-billion-valuation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;valued at about $8 billion.



That theory is “nonsense,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a Thursday note to clients he “very grudgingly” sent out, encouraging investors to not get “your investment thesis from Twitter randos.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$250 billion. That’s how much market capitalization Apple and Nvidia shed over the last two days.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Apple and Nvidia are two of the seven tech stocks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/10/these-7-tech-stocks-command-almost-90-of-the-sp-500s-gains-signaling-market-rally-may-not-be-so-healthy/?sh=65e0aafc65d5">accounting for</a>&nbsp;a large majority of major stock indexes’ gains this year, leading to lingering questions about the depth of the strong market (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla round out the super seven). Both Apple and Nvidia set all-time high share prices this year, but on far different trajectories. Apple rode a steady 42% gain this year, just ahead with the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 32% rise, thanks to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/05/04/apple-beats-quarterly-profit-sales-estimates-despite-interest-rate-headwinds/?sh=77f139f03637">solid</a>&nbsp;5% and 6% earnings beats during the first and second quarters, respectively, while Nvidia more than tripled in share price due to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/23/nvidia-earnings-stock-soars-as-ai-giant-again-smashes-quarterly-expectations/">exploding</a>&nbsp;expectations about its AI business, which grew by 141% just last quarter.



Forbes Daily: Get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day’s news in your inbox every weekday.Sign Up



By signing up, you accept and agree to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/terms-and-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Service</a>&nbsp;(including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Privacy Statement</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“The Nasdaq is sinking as one bad Apple spoils a bunch of mega-cap tech stocks,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.marketpulse.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oanda</a>&nbsp;analyst Edward Moya wrote Thursday. The index is down 2% over the last two days, steeper than the S&amp;P 500’s 1% loss.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&amp;uuid=14d8c1fa-4dad-11ee-bf85-ff6800d7a7ae&amp;url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyMy0wOS0wNy9jaGluYS1wbGFucy10by1leHBhbmQtaXBob25lLWJhbi10by1zb21lLXN0YXRlLWJhY2tlZC1maXJtcy1pbi1ibG93LXRvLWFwcGxlP3NybmQ9cHJlbWl1bQ==" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BLOOMBERGBloomberg</a>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/23/nvidia-earnings-stock-soars-as-ai-giant-again-smashes-quarterly-expectations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MORE FROM FORBESNvidia Earnings: Stock Soars As AI Giant Again Smashes Quarterly ExpectationsBy&nbsp;Derek Saul</a>



<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824661/coreweave-nvidia-debt-gpu-ai-chips-collateral" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">THE VERGEHow to get your startup a loan with one easy computer part</a>

Apple Ahead Of The IPhone 15 Launch

Apple And Nvidia’s Losses This Week Hit $250 Billion

Alessandro Rosano’s contrarian playbook for the comfort-footwear company: no financing and minimal marketing. It worked so well he sold to Crocs for $2.5 billion.



Two years ago, Brown’s Shoe Fit Co.’s desperation to stock enough HeyDude shoes to meet the demand reached frenzied levels. The buyers for the 73-store Midwestern chain would get a status report in the morning and try to place a large order. “We would get one-fourth or one-half of what we put in for,” says Adam Smith, senior manager for Brown’s and a former store manager in Jacksonville, Illinois. “The whole nation was trying to get them.”



HeyDude founder Alessandro Rosano, an Italian entrepreneur living in Hong Kong, had tried his hand at other businesses before. But with HeyDude, which makes comfortable slip-on loafers with a so-ugly-they’re-cute look, he hit the jackpot. With minimal investment and almost no marketing, revenue took off, reaching $581 million in 2021, with net profit of $175 million. That December, Rosano agreed to sell the brand to Crocs, the $6.2 billion (market cap) firm whose own ugly-cute rubber clogs are a worldwide phenomenon, for $2.5 billion in cash and stock.



With that deal, Rosano became a billionaire, worth $1.4 billion by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates. His business partner and American distributor Daniele Guidi also made a fortune, worth some $650 million after tax by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates, after bringing in $787 million in cash from the deal, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.



Rosano declined to speak with Forbes, and Guidi didn’t respond to requests for comment. But what the two men were able to build, largely under the radar, is an unlikely success. It stands in stark contrast to many of the direct-to-consumer brands that received lavish amounts of funding and attention from social media during the boom years while failing to become viable businesses. Comfort shoe maker Allbirds, once the darling of Silicon Valley, for example, has seen its market cap collapse from a peak of more than $4 billion after its 2021 initial public offering to just $199 million today as annual sales failed to top $300 million and losses piled up.



Now Rosano, a strategic advisor to the brand under Crocs following the acquisition, has set up a family office to invest his money and work on philanthropy. Crocs is using the brand, which reached $1.1 billion in sales in the latest 12-month period, to add spice to its broader business.



Comfort shoes are having a moment. Crocs, with total sales of $3.6 billion in 2022, has said it hopes to reach $5 billion in sales for its flagship brand by 2026. HeyDude looks poised to help the company soar past that. In 2022, HeyDude was the single fastest growing brand at retail, according to consumer research firm Circana (formerly NPD).



“When we first bought it, we wanted to be clear to people that this was a scale business,” Crocs CEO Andrew Rees tells&nbsp;Forbes. “They hadn’t heard of it, and didn’t know what it was. We put out the $1 billion target, which we knew we could blow past, and we’ve gotten to that easily.”



Rosano, who is in his mid-50s, was a shoe dude long before he came up with HeyDude. He grew up in Tuscany, and studied at Commercio Estero, Pistoia, from 1982 to 1987, though he never received a university degree, according to his LinkedIn profile. Pistoia, a medieval Italian city that’s popular with tourists, is less than 30 miles from Florence, home to Ferragamo and Gucci, in a region known for luxury goods and footwear.



Rosano, who started designing shoes at age 18, had tried other businesses before HeyDude, and had a shoe distributor called Fratelli Diversi. On his LinkedIn profile, where he has just 164 connections, he describes his approach to that company as “acting in a fair and reasonable way, to the people and the environment. Charity acts are also a duty.”



Rosano cofounded a company with Guidi and a third person to make wooden watches called WeWood. Wooden watches are a tough business, and the company was subject to unfair competition litigation in 2011 from a now-defunct watchmaker called Vestal International. Rosano also came up with an idea for wooden clogs with springs in their heels that sold under the name Baldo. None of his early businesses found notable success.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“If you were to lay out the playbook that they followed and present it to a series of business executives, they would say there’s no way that this would succeed.”Crocs CEO Andrew Rees
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



He’d been working in these various businesses for more than 20 years when he founded HeyDude in 2008. In a&nbsp;<a href="https://fotoshoemagazine.com/hey-dude-comfort-has-an-iconic-style/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2020 interview with Fotoshoe magazine</a>, an Italian industry publication, Rosano’s sister Elena De Martini, who was then CEO of Fratelli Diversi, described how Rosano returned from a trip to China and realized that a modern shoe that was as comfortable as a slipper didn’t exist — and decided to create one.



The shoes Rosano developed, starting with the Wally for men, were lightweight, with elastic laces that didn’t require fastening, and affordable, at around $60 a pair. “The result is perfectly constructed footwear, which is innovative, ultra-light and casual, but with style,” De Martini told&nbsp;Fotoshoe.&nbsp;The shoes were designed in Italy, but the business was headquartered in Hong Kong, where Rosano lives, with production at contract factories in China.



Rosano “is a student,” Crocs CEO Rees says. “He’s a serial entrepreneur. He had a number of entrepreneurial businesses before this that had not been successful. He was looking to improve his chances of success and he admired [Crocs’] focus on simplicity and comfort.”



Though many Italian shoemakers create beautiful shoes for Europeans, Rosano was going for something more mainstream. Not wanting to name the brand after himself as many Italian shoe entrepreneurs would, he came up with HeyDude for its laid-back California vibe, says Rick Blackshaw, who became president of the brand under Crocs. “But all his friends in Italy would call it ‘ey du-day,’” Blackshaw says.



In 2010, Guidi, who has a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Pisa and runs a consulting and marketing firm called Lever Your Business, joined Rosano to open U.S. operations. The shoes took off, and HeyDude added a woman’s model known as the Wendy, a water shoe and a variety of eco-friendly designs. The shoes were prototypically American looking, easy to wear — and looked like nothing else on the market. Almost all the sales came from the U.S. market, rather than from Europe.



HeyDude sales soared from $20 million in 2018 to&nbsp;<a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/133460125/files/doc_presentations/2022/01/10/ICR-Presentation-vF.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$191 million in 2020,</a>&nbsp;according to financials that Crocs shared with investors at the 2022 ICR conference. During the pandemic, as consumers stayed home wearing yoga pants and comfort shoes, the brand fit right in. Its success came despite having no marketing to speak of other than paid search and a commission-based sales team. “It was built on a shoestring,” says Crocs’ Rees.



The brand took off by word of mouth. “In many senses, it’s a pretty remarkable story,” Rees says. “If you were to lay out the playbook that they followed and present it to a set of business executives, they would say there’s no way that this would succeed.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
With comfort shoes having a moment, the brand’s sales soared from $20 million in 2018 to $581 million in 2021.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Footwear analysts and industry watchers were blindsided. “It kind of caught a lot of the industry players by surprise,” says Beth Goldstein, a footwear analyst at Circana. “This brand came up and was all of a sudden having these huge growth rates and buzz. It piqued everyone’s interest.”



Brown’s became one of the earliest larger retailers to stock it after its Muskogee, Oklahoma store manager learned about the brand at a 2012 trade show in Las Vegas. The Buckle, a Kearney, Nebraska-based retail chain with 440 stores, also began carrying HeyDude before the shoe company’s major expansion, in 2019.



“We were known as the top HeyDude retailer,” says Brown’s Smith. “In the pandemic, we didn’t know if we could get products, so we were ordering them by the pallet.” With customers sometimes buying five pairs at a time, however much Brown’s could get its hands on sold out fast. Facebook groups sprung up where people could compare notes, and buy, sell and trade their shoes.



“It was limited quantity and a lot of fun styles and colors, and the price was right,” Smith says. “The customer wanted them so bad it almost didn’t matter what the color was. It was crazy, that’s probably the best way to put it.”



Two days before Christmas 2021, Crocs agreed to buy HeyDude for $2.5 billion, most of it in cash and a smaller amount in stock. Wall Street was not impressed. The shoes that were selling out in the Midwest were scarce on the coasts, where many of the analysts and investors live, and the shoes lacked the cache of hot new sneaker brands like Hoka and On.



“To be honest, when they announced the acquisition, I had never heard of the brand,” says Tom Nikic, a Wedbush analyst, who follows Crocs and has been covering the footwear industry for more than a decade. “It was very much a shock to the system. I think those of us in the New York, Wall Street bubble, we didn’t realize what was happening with the brand.”



Rosano had clearly timed the market well, putting the brand up for sale as it was growing fast and demand for comfort shoes was at a high. Allbirds had gone public in November 2021 gaining a $4.1 billion valuation, making it worth 15 times its sales for that year despite being in the red. By contrast, HeyDude, which was already profitable on higher sales, seemed like a bargain. Crocs CEO Rees says that he’d been following HeyDude for a few years by the time he learned it was on the market and figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to turn it into a $1 billion brand under the Crocs umbrella.



“It was a tightly managed sale process,” Rees says. “They were trying to sell to private equity at that point. We got introduced to the founder and managed to get ourselves inserted into the sales process. At that point, we also started to learn about the compelling financials. It wasn’t completely obvious because they were private, and because they weren’t selling in the traditional channels it wasn’t showing up in the typical data sets.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Rosano had a number of businesses before HeyDude, including a wooden watch startup and a brand of clogs with springs in their heels. None found notable success.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



With Covid restrictions in place, Rees and Rosano couldn’t meet in person. But Rees figured he didn’t need to meet the HeyDude management team since he planned to replace them. He saw similarities with Crocs: both were polarizing brands that a lot of consumers loved. “I think we got a pretty good deal,” he says. “We weren’t daunted by the large-dollar price tag.”



HeyDude’s strategy of focusing on one style of comfort shoe at a mass-market price was a playbook familiar to Crocs. “Alessandro was really clear that he had modeled a lot of his company on Crocs,” Rees says. “He had been studying Crocs and taking our strategies and incorporating them.”



Crocs also knew what Wall Street didn’t at first: Rosano, helped by Guidi’s U.S. distribution, had built a significant and profitable brand with minimal investment. Though those who know him say that Rosano had been strategic in how he’d built the brand, from the outside it appeared to have burst onto the scene almost by chance.



“We’ve become somewhat acclimated to these newer upstart brands being unprofitable and burning through cash,” analyst Nikic says. “This isn’t Allbirds. This isn’t a money-losing, cash-burning business. It’s actually a very highly profitable company.” Nikic compares the brand’s fast growth to Crocs itself, as well as to Ugg, which built its business on one style of comfort boots.



Since acquiring HeyDude, Crocs has hired Blackshaw, who previously ran Sperry and Keds, as its new brand president. It’s introduced new styles, including sneakers, and is setting up collaborations to give it more buzz. It’s also rejiggering its distribution, expanding to major retailers like Shoe Carnival, Famous Footwear and Academy Sports, and building a new distribution center in Las Vegas to handle its expansion.



The acquisition hasn’t been without a few snags. In the second quarter, HeyDude took a hit — with modest 3% growth as its wholesale revenue dropped 8% year-over-year — and Crocs cut its guidance for the brand for the year from mid-20% growth to between 14% and 18%. One problem: as Crocs cut smaller distributors set up by Rosano and Guidi before the acquisition, some dumped their inventory at lowball prices on Amazon. Wedbush analyst Nikic figures that the problems with gray-market goods should wind down in the coming months once the legacy distributors’ inventory is gone. In its earnings call, Crocs pointed to HeyDude’s 30% increase in direct-to-consumer revenues as a sign of the brand’s strength while it dealt with the “pipeline fill” issues in the wholesale channel. Crocs shares are down 19%, at a recent $100, since the deal was announced.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Crocs hopes to make HeyDude as ubiquitous as its original ugly-cute rubber clogs, helped by new distribution and marketing muscle.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Marketing muscle and collaborations helped Crocs push its flagship brand, and it intends to do the same with HeyDude. Blackshaw says that the company will “overinvest,” noting it could spend up to 8% of total sales on marketing. Part of the plan: connect with consumers on TikTok and Meta, helped by partnerships with influencers and athletes. A collaboration with hunting brand Mossy Oak launched in June, another with YouTube sports and comedy group Dude Perfect (whose channel has 60 million subscribers) followed in August and a college licensing deal is in the works for this fall. The company has plans for more collaborations, including with&nbsp;Yellowstone,&nbsp;The Big Lebowski, a major beer brand and some toy brands. “It’s a lot of the same playbook that Crocs brought to bear,” Blackshaw says.



Whether the brand will take off on the coasts as it has in the middle of the country remains to be seen. Another risk for HeyDude as it expands is oversaturation. As analyst Goldstein notes, Crocs will need to strike the right balance between growth and introducing new styles that risk cannibalizing its core business. “They almost invented a category,” she says. As the brand expands into other types of shoes, “they need to make their proposition clear,” she says. “Why is a HeyDude sneaker better than anyone else’s casual sneaker?”



Meanwhile, Rosano has his fortune to invest and give away. While venture-backed startups stumble, HeyDude harkens back to an older way of building a company on a smart idea and a shoestring. Perhaps, like comfort shoes, it’s time for that to come back into style.

Category: Billionaires