Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, October 2nd.

Today on Forbes, the 2024 Forbes 400 list of Wealthiest Americans, Facts and figures.

It's a record smashing year for America's 400 richest people.

After adding nearly $1 trillion to their fortunes over the past 12 months, the Forbes 400 are worth a collective 5.4 trillion dollars, by far the most ever.

It now takes a record 3.3 billion dollars to even make the annual list, which we released Tuesday,

up from 2.9 billion dollars in 2023.

In general, the richer you were, the richer you got.

Just 25 people, a dozen of them worth $100 billion or more,

are responsible for $500 billion of the gains.

These top 25 now hold more than 2.5 trillion dollars in wealth

nearly half the list's total net worth. Forbes calculated fortunes using stock prices from September 1st, 2024.

The richest person in America for the third straight year is Elon Musk,

who is worth an estimated $244 billion.

Despite dropping $7 billion in wealth

over the past year, amid sputtering Tesla stock

and an ongoing battle over his $ billion dollar stock options package,

Musk remains some 47 billion dollars

ahead of number two, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder,

who is worth an estimated $197 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, whose estimated net worth is $181 billion,

climbed from number 8 last year to number 3 in 2024,

thanks to the huge rebound and shares of Meta,

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