Altrata Census: 29 Superbillionaires Now Hold 27% of All Billionaire Wealth, Up From 7.2% in 2017

The Numbers

Altrata's Billionaire Census 2026 counted 3,795 billionaires worldwide in 2025, an 8.2% jump from the year before and the biggest one-year increase in five years, according to CNBC. Their combined net worth hit a record $15.1 trillion, up 12.8%.

Inside that group sits a tier Altrata calls "superbillionaires": 29 people worth more than $50 billion each. They make up 0.7% of all billionaires but hold $4.1 trillion between them, 27% of total billionaire wealth, per Altrata's data as reported by CNBC.

That 27% share is nearly four times what it was in 2017, when Altrata counted only 10 superbillionaires representing 7.2% of billionaire wealth. It's also up from 16.3% just two years ago in 2023, according to Yahoo Finance's summary of the report. The concentration doesn't stop at the top: 278 billionaires held fortunes above $10 billion in 2025, up from 192 in 2021.

Below that, the pyramid still looks like a pyramid. Altrata's tiering shows 46% of all billionaires sit in the lowest bracket, $1 billion to $2 billion, and the bottom two tiers combined account for 82% of the billionaire population.

What's Driving It

The mechanism is the same market most 401(k) holders are already in. Altrata identified 150 publicly listed companies that contributed the most to billionaire wealth gains, and firms that spent at least $30 million on AI over the past five years saw market cap growth outpace non-spenders by 23% from 2024 through 2025, per CNBC.

Maya Imberg, Altrata's head of thought leadership and analytics, told CNBC that Wall Street's AI enthusiasm is a direct driver of the widening gap inside the billionaire class itself. She also flagged that this kind of wealth is volatile. This year alone brought a $1.3 trillion selloff in chip stocks in July, an $18 billion one-day drop for Elon Musk, and a $50 billion week-long plunge for Larry Ellison, according to Forbes figures cited by CNBC.

"We expect the fortunes of many of the richest billionaires, those whose companies are tech-focused, to go up and down in response to the AI story," Imberg said. She added that concentrated exposure to one sector, and to AI within it, carries real risk even if it doesn't automatically mean a bubble.

Regionally, North America's 1,337 billionaires grew 11.6% in 2025, the fastest of any region, which Imberg credited partly to U.S. dominance in private and public tech markets, per CNBC. Europe's billionaire count reached 1,081 (up 7.9%) and Asia's hit 881 (up 6.5%).

The Political Response

Numbers like this are already fueling campaign platforms. Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon has proposed a federal asset registry paired with a 5% annual wealth tax starting with billionaires, according to the Daily Wire. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is pushing a 7-8% annual wealth tax on the rich. California's Billionaire Tax Act proposes a 5% net-worth tax, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pushed similar ideas for years.

When 0.7% of billionaires control 27% of billionaire wealth and that share has quadrupled in eight years, supporters argue the tax code should capture some of those gains before they compound further, especially when the underlying wealth is stock-market paper gains rather than income already taxed through normal channels.

The Daily Wire counters that wealth taxes have a track record, and it isn't good. It points to England's 1662 hearth tax, which led homeowners to brick up fireplaces, and the 1696 window tax, which led to boarded windows, poor ventilation, and vitamin D deficiencies. Closer to home, it cites the 1990s federal luxury tax on boats over $100,000, which Congress designed to hit wealthy buyers but instead killed roughly 19,000 boatbuilding jobs as buyers switched to used boats or bought overseas, while raising almost nothing in revenue.

Both arguments rest on real evidence. The concentration numbers from Altrata are not in dispute. Whether a modern annual net-worth tax would replicate the avoidance patterns of a 17th-century window tax, or whether today's asset-registry and reporting tools make evasion harder than bricking up a chimney, remains an open question that none of these candidates has yet had to answer in office. None of the proposals cited—Nixon's, El-Sayed's, or California's ballot measure—has passed into law as of this writing.

What's Unresolved

None of the three federal or state wealth-tax proposals mentioned has cleared a legislature or a statewide vote. Nixon and El-Sayed are both candidates, not sitting senators, and the California measure remains a proposal. Meanwhile, Imberg's own caution that AI-driven fortunes can swing tens of billions of dollars in a week, as it did for Ellison, raises a separate question no wealth tax addresses: how do you tax net worth that can evaporate before the bill comes due?