LONDON: The number of billionaires in the world could reach nearly 4,000 by 2031, figures suggest, as the super-rich accumulate wealth at an accelerating rate.
There are now 3,110 billionaires globally, according to analysis by the estate agent Knight Frank. This is forecast to rise by 25 per cent over the next five years, taking the total to 3,915.
The multimillionaire class is also expanding rapidly, with the number of people worth at least $30 million around the world rising from 162,191 in 2021 to 713,626 today – an increase of more than 300 per cent, Knight Frank found.
Liam Bailey, the head of research at the estate agent, said billionaire and millionaire wealth had been “supercharged” by profits from the world of tech, particularly artificial intelligence.
“The ability to scale a business has never been higher,” he said. “That has fed into the ability to make big fortunes quickly, supercharged by tech and AI.”
The number of billionaires is expected to grow the fastest in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the research found, more than doubling from 23 in 2026 to a forecast of 65 in 2031. The billionaire population in Poland is also expected to more than double from 13 to 29 over the same period, with an 81 per cent rise in Sweden, from 32 to 58. It comes as the gap between the world’s richest and poorest continues to grow. Last year the World Inequality report found fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001 per cent of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity.
There have been growing calls for global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, amid concern the wealthiest in society are also buying political influence.
The charity Oxfam found that a record number of billionaires were created last year, taking the total above 3,000 for the first time. It reported that billionaires have collective wealth of $18.3 trillion.
The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $785.5 billion, according to the Forbes rich list. It ranks Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, as second, with a net worth of $272.5 billion, and the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, as third, with a net worth of $259 billion.
The Sunday Times rich list ranked the Hinduja family as the richest in Britain, with a net worth of £35 billion. Gopichand Hinduja, the billionaire head of the family with interests across oil, banking and real estate, died aged 85 last year.
There were 156 UK-based billionaires in 2025, according to the newspaper’s rich list, which marked the biggest fall in its 37-year history, down from 165 the year before.
