Here's are Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, January 8th. Today on Forbes, the top 10 richest

people in the world, January 26. Six of the top 10 richest people in the world saw their

fortunes fall over the month of December as public stocks slumped into the new year. The big exception was

Elon Musk, whose net worth soared by an estimated $244 billion to $726 billion as of 12 a.m. Eastern

on January 1st. The wealthiest person on the planet, Musk is now nearly three times richer than

his runner-up, Google co-founder Larry Page. Our top 10 richest people in the world list is as

of January 1st, 2026, at 12 a.m. Eastern Time. As a group, they're worth $2.6 trillion combined, up $200 billion versus last month.

As a reminder, stock prices fluctuate routinely, so the net worths on our list may change on a daily

basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes on our real-time list of billionaires. Forbes has been keeping track

of the world's billionaires since 1987. In April 2025, we found 3,028 of them for our annual list.

The richest person in the world, Elon Musk, became the first person ever worth $600 billion on December 15th, after private

investors valued his rocket maker, SpaceX, at $800 billion, up from $400 billion in August.

Four days later, he became the first person ever worth $700 billion, after the Delaware Supreme

Court restored his Tesla stock options,

which were avoided by a lower court in 2024 and are now worth $130 billion.

Musk's runner-up Larry Page, meanwhile, was the third biggest loser among this month's top

10, as shares of Google's parent company,

Alphabet, fell by 2%, amid the broader declines of both the S&P 500, which decreased 0.7%,

and the tech-heavy NASDAQ, which decreased 0.8%. That shaved $5 billion and $6 billion off the fortunes of Page and his co-founder, Sergey Brin,

who is number five on our list, respectively.

Number two, Page, is now worth an estimated $257 billion,

and Brin is now worth an estimated $237 billion.

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