The richest people in America have in common a surprising quantity. To begin with, they’re all guys who operate mostly in tech. And nearly all of them produced their fortunes by setting up their own businesses and keeping ownership as they soared for achievement, including Microsoft and Facebook. Indeed, seven of “America’s 10 richest” men are among the ‘world’s 10 richest people in America as well.
A few quirks are also shared by these American billionaires: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle founder Larry Ellison dropped off college. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin all came to schools in Montessori where kids are encouraged to think separately and creatively instead of following traditional guidelines. It also seems that billionaires like Hawaii’s houses.
As with America’s richest women, Richest people in America individuals donate a lot of cash to cause them to care. Some of the males on this list have donated hundreds of millions to research aimed at improving the lifespan of humans and eradicating hazardous illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Warren Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Ellison went a step further and promised to give away their fortunes as part of The Giving Pledge, an initiative designed by Buffett and Gates to encourage billionaires to embellish their vast wealth with philanthropy.
Here’s all you need to know about America’s richest people.
List Of 10 Richest People In America
1. Jeff Bezos
Industry: Tech
Net worth: $109.9 billion
Bezos has recently become history’s richest person.
Jeff Bezos worked at a hedge fund in New York after graduating from Princeton before he began selling books online, a company that eventually became e-commerce giant Amazon.com. Amazon.com’s beginnings are typical start-up lore–in 1994, according to Forbes, Bezos began the business out of his garage in Seattle.
The founder of Amazon.com is well known to buy the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, but his space company, Blue Origin, is fast becoming almost as popular. The aerospace company is designing reusable rockets to transport passengers into space, with the objective of shifting industrial production off Earth for one day.
Bezos lives in Medina, Wash with his wife and four kids. He owns five houses, as well as a 290,000-acre Texas ranch with headquarters in Blue Origin, making him one of the largest landowners in the U.S. In 1999, he was appointed the year’s TIME speaker.
