Just how difficult is it to make the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people these days? Consider this: There are now a record 590 American billionaires who are simply not rich enough.

With the AI and data center boom in full swing and the U.S. stock market near an all-time high, it now takes a record $4.4 billion to rank among the nation’s 400 wealthiest people. That’s $600 million more than last year and $2.7 billion more than a decade ago. In all, this year’s Forbes 400 is richer than ever, worth a combined $8 trillion, up from $6.6 trillion in 2025.

The massive gains start at the top of the list. Elon Musk was already the richest American of all-time last year, with a fortune of $428 billion. Since then, he has more than doubled his wealth over the past 12 months, getting $480 billion richer after taking his rocket maker SpaceX public in the biggest IPO in history in June (and briefly becoming the planet’s first-ever trillionaire). Musk is now worth an estimated $908 billion—a staggering $530 billion more than the list’s No. 2, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who himself is $137 billion wealthier than a year ago (and ranks two spots higher), thanks to a rise in the ecommerce giant’s stock and a much higher valuation of his own rocket firm, Blue Origin. The net worth difference between Musk and Bezos now spans more than three and a half Warren Buffetts, or the bottom 105 billionaires on this year’s Forbes 400 combined.

The Definitive Ranking Of America’s Richest People 2026

Alphabet cofounder Larry Page ranks third on this year’s list, worth $278 billion, thanks to a nearly 60% rise in shares of the Google parent company amid a strong year for Google Cloud and Google’s Gemini AI tools. His cofounder, the more charitable (and twice divorced) Sergey Brin ranks fifth, worth $256 billion. In between them, at........

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