The total number of billionaires across the globe reached new heights in 2025, due partly to the soaring valuations of tech companies and rising stock markets, according to a new study by Swiss banking giant UBS.
Some 2,900 billionaires now control $15.8 trillion, up from about 2,700 billionaires with a cumulative wealth of nearly $14 trillion a year earlier. The number and wealth of billionaires as a whole were boosted by the second-highest number of new billionaires minted in a year—287—since UBS began tracking that figure in 2015. Only 2021, with its flood of government stimulus and low interest rates that boosted the prices of assets, saw a higher number of new billionaires created.
The new, self-made billionaires created in 2025 were entrepreneurs in a range of fields. According to UBS, they include Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences; Michael Dorrell, co-founder of infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak Partners; the Zhang brothers of Mixue Ice Cream and Tea in China; and crypto billionaire Justin Sun.
UBS also interviewed 87 billionaire clients for its 11th annual Billionaire Ambitions report and found that the appeal of North America as the best place to invest in the short term had decreased to 63%, from 81% a year earlier. The appeal of investing in other regions—Western Europe, Greater China, and Asia-Pacific excluding Greater China—picked up.
While Asian billionaires’ top worry for the next year was tariffs, a majority of U.S. billionaires were most concerned about inflation or geopolitics, according to the study.
