Top Richest Americans in 2020

In the light of COVID-19, the business market suffered a hit during the year. However, there were a few people whose business skyrocketed in the pandemic. Given below is the list of the top 16 richest people, whose net worth might make you feel poor and flabbergasted. This list is the richest list, with its net worth being over a trillion.

1. Jeff Bezos

Owner of the e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos has been making it to the top of the list for a few years now. The e-commerce colossus was brought to reality in 1994, in the garage of the owner. Unsurprisingly, Bezos was the richest person in every state in 2019. The 56-year-old owner cum CEO of the corporation has hired almost 175,000 workers to meet the rising demand of the consumers during the pandemic. Bezos owned 16% stake in the company before his divorce in 2019, after almost 25 years of marriage. He transferred 4% stake to MacKenzie Bezos, but still managed to top the richest people’s list again. Bezos is one of the few lucky people whose net worth climbed up in the pandemic. Even though Bezos is said to be donating generously, Amazon is still among the few companies whose sole value has surpassed a trillion dollars. Amazon have been giving its competitors a run for their money ever since it was launched in the public sphere.

2. Bill Gates

Bill gates have been a well-known name for several years now, due to his software Microsoft. He was known for being the wealthiest person across the world for several years until in 2017 Jeff Bezos surpassed him. Microsoft has been a quintessential software in each office across the world for several years. At the young age of 31, Bill Gates became the youngest American billionaire and held the record from 1987 to 2010, until Mark Zuckerberg came into picture and became the billionaire at the age of 23. Gates is known for his philanthropy practices along with his wife Melinda Gates through their charity foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the world's largest private charity. Gates net worth is reported to be 120.1 billion as of December 2020, and he has been making it to the Forbes wealthiest people’s list since 1987. The gigantic network of Microsoft was not built overnight; the founders of the software developed it at a very young age and gradually learnt from their mistakes and made Microsoft the giant it is today. They proved that it is never too early or late to start preparing for your dream and that the dream you see would require practice and mistakes until it becomes the reality.

3. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg gained fame among the public due to his infamous social networking site cum app, Facebook, and gained his net worth of almost $102 billion (2020). Zuckerberg dropped out from Harvard university when he was 19 and in his sophomore year to fully dedicate his time to develop Facebook. Facebook has grown dramatically due its popularity, at first among the youth and later people of all age groups joined it to connect with their friends and acquaintances. Other than being in positive news, Facebook has been in several controversial issues for some time, including the privacy issue of Facebook and the hate speech and politically misleading posts. Surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg is color blind and hence he designed the color of Facebook as white and blue. Other than that, Zuckerberg almost always wears a grey t-shirt and a blue jean despite owning a fortune of money because of his color blindness and his belief of not wasting time in trivial activities such as choosing what to wear daily. He believes to not waste time in trivia and rather invest yourself to your goals. Zuckerberg is said to be actively donating money for better causes. The owner says that “the thing that we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.”

4. Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is a 90-year-old American business investor, and the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is known for his investment successes in the business world for several years. He is often referred to with the title “Oracle of Omaha” and in 2011 he was honored by the former American president Barack Obama with the “Presidential Medal of Freedom”, the highest civilian honor of America, for his munificent donation of $2 billion to charity. Buffett also pledged to donate 85% stocks of Berkshire Hathaway to charitable foundations in 2006 and he has been fulfilling his promise and has donated almost $35 billions since then. Other than being a successful investor and philanthropist, Buffett is an avid reader and spends most of his reading to develop his knowledge and says that knowledge “builds up, like compound interest.” Buffett was interested in investing and buying stocks from his young years and he bought his first share when he was 11 years old. By the age of 16, when most of us were in schools, Buffett earned more than $53,000. However, 95% of his wealth today was earned after he turned 60. Buffett has published several books regarding his business strategies and tips for other entrepreneurs and says “risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”

5. Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft and now an investor led Steve Ballmer to the billionaire’s list. A graduate of Harvard university, left Stanford university graduate school of business to become the business manager at Microsoft for Bill gates, his friend from Harvard. Gradually, he got promoted to higher positions at Microsoft and owned a share in the cooperation too. In 2000, he became the CEO of Microsoft, when Gates was concentrating more on his philanthropic activities. He served as the CEO of Microsoft till his retirement in 2014 and later bought Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association which led to a spike in his wealth and in July 2020 his net worth was recorded US$71.4billion. During his days at Microsoft, the profits of the company were increased to almost double in numbers, and the cooperation expanded worldwide with his guidance and hardwork.

6. Elon Musk

Elon Musk became an eminent personality in 2020 and has been trending due to his work at widely ranged domains. The American businessman co founded PayPal, launched SpaceX, is CEO and one of the first significant investors at Tesla, founder of The Boring Company and cofounder of OpenAI and in total eight companies were founded by him. In 2018, he was mentioned in Forbes list of ‘The Most Powerful People’ and ‘Most Innovative Leaders of 2019’. Other than being one of the wealthiest people in the world, Musk also made appearances in movies including Iron Man 2, The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory and South Park. Musk has been innovative in his approach to designs; he made a video game called ‘Blastar’ at the age of 12 and sold it for $500. He also teaches at a non-profit school, Ad Astra’ at the headquarters of SpaceX. Musk is among the few people whose business soared high in 2020, with his net worth being as high as US$153.5 billion (December 2020).

7. Larry Page

Lawrence Edward Page or Larry Page is a soft-spoken computer scientist who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998. Larry Page’s parents taught computer science at Michigan State University and consequently, Larry developed his interest in computer science at a very young age. He met the cofounder of google at Stanford University, during his Ph.D. in 1995. Today, Google is one of the dominating web search engines across the world. Larry also cofounded Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company and PageRank, the search algorithm for Google but has stepped down as their CEO and has handed it over to Sunder Pichai. Even though he has stepped down from his position in Google and Alphabet, Page still draws a hefty amount from his founded company and is worth $78.1 billion, as recorded in November 2020.

8. Sergey Brin

The 46-year-old cofounder of the web giant, Google, Sergey Brin is a computer scientist and was the president of Google. Sergey Brin helped in designing and redesigning google with Larry Page, who was his friend since their Ph.D. time in Stanford university. Like Amazon, Google was also brought to life in a garage and was financed by the family and friends of the owners. In 2004, Brin was the youngest person in the Forbes 400 richest people in the world list. Currently, he is working on designing self-driving cars. The billionaire with net worth US$76 billion, is an immigrant from Russia, who migrated to the US to evade the Jewish persecution, when he was six. Other than being a successful entrepreneur and computer scientist, Sergey Brin is known for his obsession with fitness and is seen randomly stretching or performing any asana amidst a meeting or in office.

9. Larry Ellison

Larry Joseph Ellison is an American businessman who has been in the list of richest people and powerful people across the globe several times. His self-made software Oracle, which was co-founded by Bob Miner and Ed Oates in 1977, became a successful mammoth which plays a huge role in our regular lives. He guided the Oracle Cooperation as CEO for 37 years and then later stepped down to become the chief technology officer. He dropped out of college to start his own business and started working towards creating Oracle. The credit cards that we use are based on Oracle’s database that Ellison created. He is a very generous philanthropist and has pledged to give away half of his wealth to charity. With the net worth being $64 billion, Ellison admittedly spends lavishly on luxurious tennis courts, swimming pools and mansions.

10. MacKenzie Scott

MacKenzie Scott owns 4% shares of the e-commerce giant Amazon founded by her ex-husband Jeff Bezos. Her net worth was estimated to be US$59.8 billion in December 2020. She graduated from Princeton University with English as her major and she also assisted highly respectable Nobel Laureate in Literature Toni Morrison, who claimed that Scott was “one of the best students in her creative writing classes.” Scott assisted Morrison as a research assistant while writing the novel Jazz. Scott is also a successful novelist and has published two novels till date. She was also honored with American Book Award in 2006. She has also been donating generously to charities, and food banks and organizations fighting the impact of the pandemic. She has been actively keeping tabs on the issues people are facing due to the pandemic, and is using her privileges to help the less fortunate ones.

11. Rob Walton

Walmart Inc. is the largest retail business and it functions worldwide under different names, and it has been in the market for about half a century. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and the heritage has been passed over to their eldest son Samuel Robson Rob Walton. The retail currently has 11,510 stores worldwide and it provides everything one could possibly need in daily life at an affordable price tag. Rob Walton served as the chairman of the behemoth till 2015 for 23 years and then passed on the role to his son-in-law, Greg Penner. However, the eldest son of the founders still manages to be worth around US$70 billion and still holds a seat in the board members. During the pandemic, the business of retail took off and to meet the rising consumer demands, they hired additional temporary workers 400,000 in magnitude. Walton donated 1.5 million in 2016 to his own charity foundation, Walton Family Holdings Trust, which ultimately went back into their own pockets.

12. Jim Walton

Another heir to the heirloom Walmart, Jim Walton is the youngest son of Sam Walton, the founder of the largest retail multinational corporation. The Waltons are the richest family in America with their net worth being over $190 billion. Jim was among the board members of the Walmart Inc. until 2016 and he passed on the legacy to his son Steuart. Jim Walton also supervises the Arvest Bank Group, which was also heirloom of their parents. Walton is the chairman and CEO of their family banking business. His net worth as of November 2020 was estimated to be $69.7 billion. He also manages their publishing business, Community Publishers, which releases newspapers, magazines and other texts. The billionaire lives in his posh house based in Bentonville, Arkansas with his family and has been making it to the Forbes list of richest people for a long time.

13. Alice Walton

Alice Walton is the sister of Jim Walton and Rob Walton, and undoubtedly, she also inherited their family business. The 71-year-old heiress of the Walton family business is estimated to be worth $70.4 billion as of November 2020. She completed her graduation with economics as her major from Trinity University, Texas and started her career by joining their family business at Arvest Bank Group. However, later she turned her focus to art and founded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and became the chairwoman of the museum to promote art. Her father, Sam Walton in his autobiography Made in America described Alice as himself “but even more volatile” than himself. Walton’s personal life had been bumpy, with divorces and her poor driving skills, which had led to several accidents and a few of them lead to serious injuries too. Walton is now planning to deconstruct the broken healthcare system of America and is going to launch another cooperation.

14. Julia Flesher Koch

The 57-year-old became one of the richest women across the world, due to the inherited wealth of her late husband David Koch, who passed away at the age of 79 in August 2019. David Koch was a billionaire and co-owner of Koch industries and often featured among the top 10 richest people worldwide. Before tying the knot with David Koch, Julia Flesher was inclined towards fashion designing and started assisting Adolfo, who designed for several prominent people in the period. Surprisingly, Julia and David met each other at a blind date which went grotesquely wrong and Julia made up her mind to never date the then ‘play-boy’. They met again six months later and started dating and eventually got married. Before marrying, Julia left her job and started managing her husband’s several houses. Julia donates plentiful to the art museums, galleries and other social causes.

15. Charles Koch

Charles Koch inherited Koch industries from his father and the founder of the corporation Fred Koch, which he managed with his late brother David Koch. Koch industries involve refining, forest products, chemicals, polymers and fibers and investments. The business was fundamentally known as Rock Island Oil until Charles Koch renamed it to Koch industries to honor the legacy of their father. The 85-year-old industrialist has been actively participating in politics and has been outspoken about his liberalistic opinions. He is the chairman and the CEO of multidimensional cooperation with his net worth being approximately $44.9 billion, which has declined since last year, when he was ranked eleventh in the wealthiest people’s ranking. Since 2009, Koch companies have been honored with over 1300 awards due to their safety measures, customer service, environment friendly actions and innovative methods. Koch brothers has become the second wealthiest family in the world, just after the Walton family.

16. Michael Bloomberg

The former mayor of NYC and democratic presidential candidate, ranks sixteenth in the richest people of America in 2020. The American billionaire derives most of his revenue from Bloomberg L.P, which he co-founded with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar. The American politician cum businessman is worth approximately $55 billion as of November 2020. Bloomberg L.P. is a media and technology company which has marked its impact on the market since its establishment. Bloomberg was elected as mayor of NYC three times consecutively and served at the office for more than a decade. His philanthropist practices involved public health initiatives, supporting gun control and establishing public schools. He also participated in the elections and self-funded his campaign but did not succeed. Other than being a successful businessman and an influential politician, Bloomberg is also a writer and has published his autobiography and several other articles for books and articles for newspapers.