Meet The Richest Californians: The Forbes 400

Kat Schuster
Updated ·5 min read
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CALIFORNIA — The Golden State attempted to stitch itself back together after yet another terrible COVID-19 surge this winter and it's been a rough 2022 — especially considering the effects of inflation. On the other hand, the state's well-heeled residents have only accumulated more wealth.

As inflation climbs and gas prices skyrocket, here's a look at those who aren't feeling the pinch quite as much. According to the 2021 report, The 400 wealthiest Americans, identified by Forbes, saw their riches grow 40 percent over the last year.

On the list, there are some familiar names that have made the ranking in past years. And California has more billionaires than any other state, with New York coming in second.

"California has been the main engine for American growth for the last 50 years," Richard Walker, an emeritus professor at U.C. Berkeley who studies economic geography told the New York Times. "This is not sufficiently acknowledged — how immense the California economy is."

This is largely because of Silicon Valley. On this year's list, 44 percent of California's wealthiest made their riches in tech, according to Forbes.

Forbes calculated the net worth of those on the list using stock prices at Wall Street's closing bell on Sept. 3, 2021.

There were 8 California women on the list, including Laurene Powell Jobs, who inherited billions of stock in Apple and Disney from her late husband Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Alice Walton, 71, remains the richest woman in America for the seventh year. The Walmart heir is worth $67.9 billion.

Of the richest people in California, Mark Zuckerberg maintained his footing at the top of the list, coming at no. 3 overall. He's worth $134.5 billion and remains one of the youngest on the list at 37.

Zuckerberg and his wife have spent $3 billion to find a cure to "all disease" by the year 2100, Forbes reported.

"We may not have the power to create the world we want immediately, but we can all start working on the long term today," Zuckerberg has said.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce giant Amazon, topped The Forbes 400 list. His net worth was $201 billion, according to Forbes' real-time wealth tracker. Bezos was on track to top the list for a fifth consecutive year.

Elon Musk, who recently moved Tesla to Texas but founded the company in California, was worth $151 billion.

Forbes noted a glaring fact about 2021: The wealthiest people in America gave less to charity than last year. The number of folks who gave away more than 20 percent of their net worth since last year's ranking dropped from 10 to 8. Those who gave away less than 1 percent of their wealth rose from 127 to 156.

Here are 28 of the Californians sitting at the top.

  1. No. 3: Mark Zuckerberg (37), $134.5 billion from Facebook, META; Lives in Palo Alto

  2. No. 5: Larry Page (48), $123 billion from Google; Lives in Palo Alto

  3. No. 6: Sergey Brin (48), $118.5 billion from Google; Lives in Atherton

  4. No. 29: Dustin Moskovitz (37), $24.1 billion from Facebook; Lives in San Francisco

  5. No. 30: Eric Schmidt (66), $23.9 billion from Google; Lives in Atherton

  6. No. 33: Laurene Powell Jobs and family (57), $22.1 billion from Apple, Disney; Lives in Los Altos

  7. No. 34: Jensen Huang (58), $21.3 billion from semiconductors; Lives in San Jose

  8. No. 38: Robert Pera (43), $19 billion from wireless networking gear; Lives in San Francisco

  9. No. 46: Donald Bren (89), $16.2 billion from Irvine Co. real estate; Lives in Newport Beach

  10. No. 51: John Doerr (70), $15.2 billion from venture capital; Lives in Woodside

  11. No. 51: Bobby Murphy (33), $15.2 billion from Snapchat; Lives in Venice

  12. No. 53: Jack Dorsey (44), $14.9 billion from Twitter, Square; Lives in San Francisco

  13. No. 54: Eric Yuan and family (51), $14.5 billion from Zoom Video Communications; Lives in Santa Clara

  14. No. 55: Evan Spiegel (31), $13.8 billion from Snapchat; Lives in Los Angeles

  15. No. 57: Brian Chesky (40), $12.5 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco

  16. No. 60: Brian Armstrong (38), $11.5 billion from cryptocurrency; Lives in San Francisco

  17. No. 60: Charles Schwab (84), $11.5 billion from discount brokerage; Lives in Woodside

  18. No. 65: Jan Koum (45), $10.9 billion from WhatsApp; Lives in Atherton

  19. No. 66: Joe Gebbia (40), $10.8 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco

  20. No. 66: Gordon Moore (92), $10.8 billion from Intel; Lives in Woodside

  21. No. 71: David Geffen (78), $10.5 billion from movies, record labels; Lives in Beverly Hills

  22. No. 74: Marc Benioff (57), $10.2 billion from business software; Lives in San Francisco

  23. No. 75: Steven Rales (70), $10.1 billion from manufacturing; Lives in Santa Barbara

  24. No. 76: Nathan Blecharczyk (38), $10 billion from Airbnb; Lives in San Francisco

  25. No. 88: George Roberts (78), $9 billion from private equity; Lives in Atherton

  26. No. 89: Patrick Soon-Shiong (69), $8.9 billion from pharmaceuticals; Lives in Los Angeles

  27. No. 92: Vinod Khosla (66), $8.6 billion from venture capital; Lives in Portola Valley

  28. No. 98: Jack Dangermond (76), $8.4 billion from mapping software; Lives in Redlands

Read the full report here.



This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Patch