The Anti-Forbes List ranks the richest humans not by their net worth (illiquid, volatile and unrealizable as it is) but by the value their companies have created for other people, excluding themselves. The list shows the top 28; if the number seems peculiar, it’s because that’s where Elon Musk, with the largest net worth, slips to.
Top of the list is Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVidia, the only company unambiguously making astounding profits from the AI boom—it makes the chips. He’s followed by familiar names such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, the Googlers, Mark Zuckerberg, and thence to the old school: Warren Buffet, the Waltons. Oracle’s Larry Ellison is in an overextended ninth place, and the top 10 is rounded out by Netflix’s Reed Hastings.
I’d like to see similar charts for other things more tangible than a trillion dollars of grok stock. For example, “ranked by the annual profits of their companies, by stake,” perhaps (or some other underlying aspect of real earnings). But that’s even less a measure of personal wealth or power. “Ranked by the collateral value of their holdings” would be a very tangible measure, as that’s the cash they can flash (how many Twitters Elon could buy, how many twitterers Joanne could sue) but an uncertainty principle applies: it’s impossible to know what they would get until they ask the bank. So the rankings would have to concoct some formula to estimate it.
How about “ranked by how much tax they paid?” Yes, now I’m just being silly.
