On March 11, 2026, Forbes magazine published its annual ranking of the world’s billionaires, naming entrepreneur Elon Musk the wealthiest person on the planet for the second consecutive year, with an estimated net worth of $839 billion—a figure that more than doubled the $342 billion he had accumulated in 2025. On the same list, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú led the national contingent with an estimated net worth of $125 billion.
Musk—the principal shareholder of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, aerospace company SpaceX, social network X, and artificial intelligence firm xAI—holds a net worth more than triple that of the next two individuals on the list: Google search engine co-founders Larry Page, with $257 billion, and Sergey Brin, with $237 billion. According to the Forbes ranking, the planet is home to a record 3,428 billionaires in 2026—400 more than in 2025—whose combined fortunes total $20.1 trillion, up from $16.1 trillion in the previous edition.
In the case of Mexico, the publication listed 24 individuals in its ranking.
Slim Helú’s fortune grew from $82.5 billion in 2025 to $125 billion in 2026. Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco, heir to Grupo México, nearly doubled his net worth, rising from $28.6 billion to $67.1 billion. The Baillères family also doubled its wealth, increasing from $9 billion to $19.5 billion. The list also included María Asunción Aramburuzabala, the Hank family, Fernando Chico Pardo, Antonio del Valle Ruiz, Rufinio Vigil González, David Peñaloza Alanís, several members of the Coppel Luken family, Cynthia Helena Grossman Fleishman, Manuel Arango Arias, Roberto Hernández Ramírez, the Beckmann family, Alfredo Harp Helú, the Espinosa Abdalá brothers, and Oscar Baeza Fares.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego presented the contrasting case; his net worth plummeted from $13.4 billion in 2024 to $3.7 billion in the 2026 rankings. According to *Forbes* magazine, during that period, Salinas Pliego’s companies faced multi-billion-dollar litigation in both Mexico and the United States, while the businessman broke ties with the governments of the so-called “Fourth Transformation” and emerged as one of their leading detractors.
