Number of billionaires globally could reach 4,000 in next five years

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% 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 $30m (£22m) around the world rising from 162,191 in 2021 to 713,626 today – an increase of more than 300%, 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% 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% 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 $18.3tn.

The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $785.5bn, according to the Forbes rich list. It ranks Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, as second, with a net worth of $272.5bn, and the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, as third, with a net worth of $259bn.

The Sunday Times rich list ranked the Hinduja family as the richest in Britain, with a net worth of £35bn. 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.

Reports of the super-rich fleeing Britain have proliferated in the past year, with many wealth advisers attributing the trend to the UK’s abolition of the non-dom regime.

Bailey added that political volatility, tax reform and tighter regulation were pushing the super-rich to a smaller group of cities that offer “opportunity and predictability”.

Rory Penn, who chairs the private office business at Knight Frank, said that wealth creation was rising against a “more complex global economic backdrop”.

He said: “The ultra-wealthy are becoming markedly more mobile, yet the list of markets where they feel genuinely comfortable investing or basing their families has narrowed.”

North America is home to just under a third of the global billionaire population, Knight Frank found – however, its forecasts suggest it will be overtaken by Asia Pacific by 2031. By this time, billionaires from this region are expected to account for 37.5% of the total, compared with 27.8% from North America.