America has more billionaires than ever before — led by Elon Musk, whose fortune is now estimated at $716 billion.
In earlier generations, men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were seen as the ultimate symbols of wealth and power. Today, a new group of tech leaders — including Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jensen Huang — now rank among the richest Americans in history.
Comparing fortunes across centuries isn’t simple. In the past, wealth was often measured against the size of the US economy at the time. When the country was smaller, figures like Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie controlled a much larger share of national wealth than any single person does today.
At his peak in 1937, Rockefeller’s fortune equaled about 1.5% of US GDP — a level of economic dominance rarely matched. Adjusted for today, that would be around $499 billion. But even that has now been surpassed. Forbes estimates Elon Musk’s wealth at more than $716 billion, making him the richest American in recorded history by modern standards.
To compare these fortunes, we relied on Forbes’ historical rankings, which adjust past wealth using economic data and inflation, alongside current net-worth estimates for living billionaires such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, and the Walton family heirs.
Together, these names tell the story of how American wealth evolved — from railroads, steel, and oil to software, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and space technology — shaping not just fortunes, but entire eras of business and power.