The rise of the world's first trillionaire

In the last few years, billionaires have only been adding to their net worth, and it likely will not be long until someone reaches the status of a trillionaire.

When will someone be worth $1 trillion?

It is hard to pinpoint a definitive answer, given that the net worths of the world's richest people are constantly fluctuating. However, a number of financial calculators have attempted to predict when the world might see its first trillionaire.

Oxfam International recently released an inequality report which determined that the world "could have its first-ever trillionaire in just a decade." This assessment comes as the world's five richest people have more than doubled their fortunes since 2020 to a staggering $869 billion, Oxfam said.

Finance and procurement platform Approve also analyzed the state of the world's priciest elite a few years back, looking at data from the 30 wealthiest people in the world. Based on 2022 figures, their results showed that someone's net worth could exceed $1 trillion sooner — potentially sometime in 2024.

Who will it be, and will there be others?

At one time, the obvious answer was Twitter CEO and Tesla founder Elon Musk. The controversial tech mogul is currently valued at around $198 billion, according to Forbes. He is the world's second-richest person behind LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault, who himself could also be in the running to become a trillionaire by the early 2030s.

For a long time, Musk seemed to be the consensus choice to become the first person to reach a $1 trillion net worth. After all, his wealth was on a seemingly meteoric rise, and he was at one point valued at over $200 billion. "Of the 21 individuals who stand a chance of reaching this phenomenal milestone in their lifetime, Elon Musk is predicted to be the first," said CEO Magazine. This prediction was reiterated by The Guardian, The Economic Times and many others.

However, Musk's net worth has been fluctuating in recent years, in part due to plunging Tesla stocks and a number of controversial decisions he made surrounding his $44 billion acquisition of X. The majority of the outlets predicting Musk as the first trillionaire had published pieces earlier in 2022 — prior to his X takeover.

So if Musk does not become the world's first trillionaire, who else could it be? Well, there is always Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who held the spot as the world's richest man for many years before being usurped by Musk. He is still the third-richest person on Earth, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $192.4 billion, and could easily jump a few spots in the rankings. Investopedia said there is another possible dark horse: genome researcher Craig Venter. While Venter's current research is not cancer-related, "imagine what a cure for cancer could be worth," Investopedia said. So for now, Venter is unlikely to become a trillionaire, but the "idea cannot be wholly dismissed," Investopedia said.

Others cited by Approve as potential trillionaire candidates include Zhang Yiming, the founder of Chinese tech company ByteDance Technology, who is valued at $43 billion, and Mukesh Ambani, an Indian mogul and the chairman of conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited, who is valued at $110 billion.

However, even some ultra-rich people themselves believe the world's first trillionaire will come from the tech space. Mark Cuban, known for owning the Dallas Mavericks and his entrepreneurialism on ABC's "Shark Tank," said in 2017, "The world's first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of." The world will "see more technological advances over the next ten years than we have over the last thirty. It's just going to blow everything away."

So just how much money is $1 trillion?

It can be hard to grasp just how much more money $1 trillion is than $1 billion. Basically, $1 trillion is equal to 1,000 billion dollars, which itself equals 1,000 million dollars, Investopedia said. Simply put, a trillionaire would be the custodian of a "phenomenal sum of money."

$1 trillion is so large that trying to put it into perspective can often be difficult. For starters, the sum is roughly the same as many countries' gross domestic products, according to the World Bank. This includes Australia, which has an estimated GDP of $1.6 trillion, Brazil, which has a GDP of $1.9 trillion, and Indonesia, which has a GDP of $1.3 trillion. While many countries have GDPs in the tens of trillions, there are still a number of highly developed states that just barely reach the trillion-dollar mark.

USA Today compiled a list of some of the things a person could do with $1 trillion, and it is quite specific. For example, you could buy every person in San Francisco an apartment, even in a city where the average rent is $3,600 and home prices average $1.35 million. A sports fan could buy the Miami Dolphins football team — 1,000 times over.  You could also buy every team in every sports league, Fox Business said, and still have three-quarters of your wealth left. You could also buy all of the shares of ExxonMobil, McDonald's and Coca-Cola and have money to spare.

Beyond the financial aspects of $1 trillion, it can be hard to comprehend just how much more one trillion is than one billion, of anything. For example, USA Today said that if you were to time travel back one billion seconds, you would be in 1987, which, relative to world history, is not long at all. However, time travel back one trillion seconds, and you would be quite a bit farther back on the timeline — approximately 30,000 B.C.

Should trillionaires even exist?

Some people would argue they should not, and there is an interesting scale that shows just how vast wealth inequality is, not only in the United States but the world. USA Today noted that there was a backlash in 2020 when it was reported that Bezos was on track to become a trillionaire, especially in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. A video made by CollegeHumor shows just how much money someone like Bezos truly has, critiquing his wealth in contrast to claims from Amazon employees that they work long hours without bathroom breaks.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, himself one of the longtime richest people in the world, has weighed in on whether people should be able to accumulate this type of wealth. "For the first time in my life, people are saying, 'Okay, should you have billionaires?'" Gates said to Forbes. "If you really implemented something like that, the amount you would gain would be much less than the amount you would lose."

Others disagree with the premise that a trillionaire will be among us so soon — and whether anyone would actually want to be a trillionaire. While it may sound like a no-brainer, there is "not much obvious personal benefit to becoming a trillionaire," economics professor Tyler Cowen said for Bloomberg. Indeed, that shift could make whoever that trillionaire is a "political target." X, for example, is now worth much less than Elon Musk originally paid for it, making it "that much harder for him to become a trillionaire," Cowen said.

And at the end of the day, taxes rule all, Cowen said. Whenever it happens, at some point the global economy ensures there will be a trillionaire, and a "good share of the credit should go to the Federal Reserve, not necessarily the person who earned the money."

February 14, 2024: This article has been updated throughout with additional information