89 Californians worth $1.1 trillion on Forbes wealthiest Americans list
If you think California has lots of really-really rich folks, you’re correct!
My trusty spreadsheet’s review of 2021’s edition of the Forbes 400 — the venerable roster of America’s wealthiest people — found 89 Californians listed are worth a combined $1.105 trillion.
How much money is that? Well, it’s roughly equal to $3,300 for all 330 million Americans or $135 for each of the 8 billion residents of this planet.
These Golden Staters own nest eggs equal to almost one-quarter of the $4.5 trillion total worth of all members of the 400 — a club that required a minimum of $2.9 billion per person to make the cut. (Former president Donald Trump missed the mark, by the way!)https://f05f6b947290c9d9b54e70a4e0c3b7e8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Or you could buy every private home in Virginia at the start of 2021. Or every residence in nine states combined — North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, West Virginia, Delaware, District of Columbia, Rhode Island and Nebraska.
And only six public companies in the world are trillion-dollar-plus firms: Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet (Google) and Amazon.
It’s should come as no surprise that the Golden State’s members at the of top this exclusive list are all tech titans — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt.
The fortunes cited by Forbes also include folks enriched by two legacy industries in California: Hollywood and real estate. Entertainment titans include David Geffen, George Lucas, Reed Hastings, Steven Spielberg and Haim Saban and real estate’s Donald Bren, Rick Caruso, Jean Pritzker, Anthony Pritzker and Edward Roski Jr.
Some well-known consumer-goods brands also created riches that qualify for the 400 list: Marijke Mars (Mars candy), Gary Friedman (Restoration Hardware), Lynsi Snyder (In-N-Out Burger), Rodney Sacks (Monster energy drinks) and John Fisher (Gap).
By the way, the top two fortunes are folks very familiar to Californians: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was tops at $201 billion with ex-Californian Elon Musk right behind at $190.5 billion. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX now claims to be a Texan.
Note: The 89 listed Californians had an average $11.4 billion in assets, a bounty that would have ranked as the No. 63 individual fortune on this year’s Forbes list.
Courtesy of the magazine’s research, here are the 89 wealthiest Californians — in order of their U.S. ranking among the 400, their age, wealth (as of Sept.3) and where all that money came from …
No. 3: Mark Zuckerberg (37), $134.5 billion from Facebook
No. 5: Larry Page (48), $123 billion from Google
No. 6: Sergey Brin (48), $118.5 billion from Google
No. 29: Dustin Moskovitz (37), $24.1 billion from Facebook
No. 30: Eric Schmidt (66), $23.9 billion from Google
No. 33: Laurene Powell Jobs and family (57), $22.1 billion from Apple, Disney
No. 34: Jensen Huang (58), $21.3 billion from semiconductors
No. 38: Robert Pera (43), $19 billion from wireless networking gear
No. 46: Donald Bren (89), $16.2 billion from Irvine Co. real estate
No. 51: John Doerr (70), $15.2 billion from venture capital
No. 51: Bobby Murphy (33), $15.2 billion from Snapchat
No. 53: Jack Dorsey (44), $14.9 billion from Twitter, Square
No. 54: Eric Yuan and family (51), $14.5 billion from Zoom Video Communications
No. 55: Evan Spiegel (31), $13.8 billion from Snapchat
No. 57: Brian Chesky (40), $12.5 billion from Airbnb
No. 60: Brian Armstrong (38), $11.5 billion from cryptocurrency
No. 60: Charles Schwab (84), $11.5 billion from discount brokerage
No. 65: Jan Koum (45), $10.9 billion from WhatsApp
No. 66: Joe Gebbia (40), $10.8 billion from Airbnb
No. 66: Gordon Moore (92), $10.8 billion from Intel
No. 71: David Geffen (78), $10.5 billion from movies, record labels
No. 74: Marc Benioff (57), $10.2 billion from business software
No. 75: Steven Rales (70), $10.1 billion from manufacturing
No. 76: Nathan Blecharczyk (38), $10 billion from Airbnb
No. 88: George Roberts (78), $9 billion from private equity
No. 89: Patrick Soon-Shiong (69), $8.9 billion from pharmaceuticals
No. 92: Vinod Khosla (66), $8.6 billion from venture capital
No. 98: Jack Dangermond (76), $8.4 billion from mapping software
No. 107: Douglas Leone (64), $8.1 billion from venture capital
No. 108: Marijke Mars (57), $8 billion from candy, pet food
No. 108: Stewart and Lynda Resnick (N/A), $8 billion from agriculture, water
No. 124: George Lucas (77), $7.2 billion from Star Wars
No. 124: Michael Moritz (67), $7.2 billion from venture capital
No. 133: Ken Xie (58), $7 billion from cybersecurity
No. 134: Anthony Wood (55), $6.9 billion from Roku
No. 138: Jeff Skoll (56), $6.8 billion from eBay
No. 141: David Sun (69), $6.7 billion from Kingston memory chips
No. 141: John Tu (80), $6.7 billion from Kingston memory chips
No. 146: Henry Samueli (67), $6.6 billion from Broadcom semiconductors
No. 151: Meg Whitman (65), $6.4 billion from eBay
No. 161: Antony Ressler (59), $6.2 billion from finance
No. 168: Edward Roski, Jr. (82), $6.1 billion from real estate
No. 168: John A. Sobrato and family (82), $6.1 billion from real estate
No. 172: Chris Larsen (61), $6 billion from cryptocurrency
No. 176: Scott Cook (69), $5.9 billion from software
No. 176: Tom Gores (57), $5.9 billion from private equity
No. 182: Peter Gassner (56), $5.8 billion from software
No. 182: Henry Nicholas, III. (61), $5.8 billion from Broadcom semiconductors
No. 188: Reed Hastings (60), $5.7 billion from Netflix
No. 195: David Baszucki (58), $5.6 billion from Roblox online gaming
No. 195: Dagmar Dolby and family (80), $5.6 billion from Dolby Laboratories
No. 195: Eric Smidt (61), $5.6 billion from Harbor Freight Tools
No. 200: Don Hankey (78), $5.5 billion from auto loans
No. 206: Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer (59), $5.2 billion from Cargill
No. 209: Jeff Tangney (49), $5.1 billion from healthcare IT
No. 224: Jeff Rothschild (66), $4.8 billion from Facebook
No. 229: Rupert Johnson, Jr. (81), $4.7 billion from Franklin Templeton money management
No. 247: Gary Friedman (64), $4.5 billion from Restoration Hardware
No. 253: Jeff T. Green (44), $4.4 billion from online advertising
No. 261: Rick Caruso (62), $4.3 billion from real estate
No. 269: Lynsi Snyder (39), $4.2 billion from In-N-Out Burger
No. 273: Thomas Siebel (68), $4.1 billion from business software
No. 273: Peter Thiel (53), $4.1 billion from Facebook, investments
No. 273: Steven Udvar-Hazy (75), $4.1 billion from aircraft leasing
No. 289: Jean (Gigi) Pritzker (59), $3.9 billion from hotels, investments
No. 289: Donald Sterling (87), $3.9 billion from real estate
No. 289: Michael Xie (52), $3.9 billion from cybersecurity
No. 300: Michael Milken (75), $3.8 billion from investments
No. 310: Anthony Pritzker (60), $3.7 billion from hotels, investments
No. 310: Steven Spielberg (74), $3.7 billion from movies
No. 318: David Filo (55), $3.6 billion from Yahoo
No. 318: Jay Paul (74), $3.6 billion from real estate
No. 333: Archie Aldis Emmerson and family (92), $3.5 billion from timberland, lumber mills
No. 333: Romesh T. Wadhwani (74), $3.5 billion from software
No. 340: Behdad Eghbali (45), $3.4 billion from private equity
No. 340: Jose E. Feliciano (48), $3.4 billion from private equity
No. 340: RJ Scaringe (38), $3.4 billion from Rivian electric trucks
No. 340: Jerry Yang (52), $3.4 billion from Yahoo
No. 358: Ben Silbermann (39), $3.3 billion from social media
No. 363: Aneel Bhusri (55), $3.2 billion from business software
No. 363: Alice Schwartz (95), $3.2 billion from biotech
No. 368: Haim Saban (76), $3.1 billion from TV network, investments
No. 368: Rodney Sacks (71), $3.1 billion from Monster energy drinks
No. 377: Neal Blue and family (86), $3 billion from defense
No. 377: Jed McCaleb (46), $3 billion from cryptocurrency
No. 389: Riley Bechtel and family (69), $2.9 billion from engineering, construction
No. 389: Baiju Bhatt (36), $2.9 billion from Robinhood stock trading app
No. 389: John Fisher (60), $2.9 billion from Gap
No. 389: Paul Sciarra (40), $2.9 billion from Pinterest