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richest-person-in-each-country-4x5-Illustration by Neil Jamieson for Forbes

The Richest Billionaire In Each Country 2025

Zhang Yiming, Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk

Illustration by Neil Jamieson for Forbes; VCG/Getty Images, Stephane Cardinale/Getty Images, Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images

ByMonica Hunter-Hart,

Forbes Staff.

Monica Hunter-Hart is a reporter covering the world's richest people.

Apr 02, 2025, 06:30am EDTUpdated Apr 2, 2025, 01:13pm EDT

While some of these moguls are repeat winners—like Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault—many are fresh faces, and one is his country’s first-ever billionaire.

Billionaires are plentiful—but they aren’t everywhere. Less than half of all countries count a billionaire among their citizens. A fifth of those that do have just one.

This year, 78 nations and semi-autonomous territories have at least one billionaire on the list, the same number as last year. The richest member of any country is Tesla cofounder and CEO Elon Musk (estimated net worth: $342 billion), who was born a dual citizen of South Africa and Canada but obtained American citizenship in 2002 and has counted the United States as his primary residence ever since. Among mainland China’s 450 billionaires, the richest is Zhang Yiming ($65.5 billion), cofounder of TikTok parent ByteDance. India’s wealthiest is Mukesh Ambani ($92.5 billion), who chairs Reliance Industries, the multinational conglomerate founded by his late father.

The U.S. dominates the top of the ranking, with only two non-Americans in the “$100 Billion Club.” One is Amancio Ortega ($124 billion), the richest person in Spain and cofounder of the retailer Inditex, known for the Zara fast fashion brand. The other is Bernard Arnault ($178 billion), the wealthiest in France, whose fashion and cosmetics empire LVMH includes the likes of Louis Vuitton and Sephora.

Three countries have joined or rejoined since last year: Albania and Peru, which have one billionaire each, and Saudi Arabia, where Forbes identified 14 new billionaires and one returnee. The Saudi fortunes stem from a wide range of sources, from banking to pharmaceuticals to broadcasting. The richest is that of investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud ($16.5 billion). Peru’s richest person, Eduardo Hochschild ($2.4 billion), returns to the list this year thanks to the rising share price of his mining company, while Albania has its first-ever billionaire: Samir Mane ($1.4 billion), who created the country’s largest supermarket and retail electronics chains.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh, Panama and Uruguay no longer have any billionaires. Muhammed Aziz Khan ($1.1 billion), who chairs the Bangladeshi energy company Summit Group, has been living in Singapore and finally transferred his citizenship there (the city-state doesn’t allow dual citizenship). He’s not the wealthiest of his new nationality, though—that title belongs to the paint manufacturing entrepreneur Goh Cheng Liang ($13 billion). Meanwhile, Forbes has recategorized the assets of Panama’s Stanley Motta as a family fortune in light of new information, so the banking investor is no longer considered an individual billionaire. And Uruguay’s Andrés Bzurovski Bay and Sergio Fogel have fallen below the three-comma mark thanks to the dropping share price of their fintech startup dLocal.

The Asia-Pacific region had the most billionaire citizens in 2024, but this year its 1,052 ranking members put it just behind the Americas, which have 1,077, led by 902 in the U.S. After that comes Europe (772) and the Middle East & Africa (127).