Forbes counts what they kept. We count what they built.

Everyone who owns these companies' shares besides their founders. That ownership is concentrated. The Federal Reserve estimates that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households hold 50.9% of all corporate stock and mutual fund shares held by households, the top 10% hold 88.1%, and the bottom half hold 0.6% (Q2 2026). Foreign investors hold about 20% of U.S. corporate stock through portfolio holdings, and about a third of publicly traded U.S. stock counting larger stakes. Retirement accounts and pensions, including 401(k)s and IRAs, hold about a third of publicly traded U.S. stock. So "others" means pension funds, retirement savers, index funds, employees and foreign investors, weighted toward the wealthy. Two more limits: market value can reflect pricing power as well as value to customers, and this list measures value held by other owners, not the benefit to customers or the public. The sources are listed under Where every number comes from.

An independent, unpaid project. No ads, no sponsors, and no funding from or relationship with any company or person on the list. The author's own stock holdings are disclosed at the bottom of the page. Every input is public and downloadable, so you don't have to trust us: rerun the math yourself. Corrections go to @trillionlist on X.

At least two other sites rank founders by value created for others, and they measure it differently. The Anti-Forbes List starts from finance professor Hendrik Bessembinder's measure of wealth created above Treasury-bill returns, attributes it by founding stake, subtracts the founder's current net worth, and refreshes every 15 minutes; it also includes heirs and founders who have left their companies. Wealth Creators subtracts founders' disclosed stakes from company value for 12 founding teams. We differ in two ways: we also subtract book equity, so capital investors paid in or the company kept isn't counted as created, and one published rule decides who is ranked. Each approach has merits. Bessembinder's measure, for example, counts dividends and buybacks paid out over a company's life, which a snapshot like ours does not.

Over their last five reported fiscal years, the 35 ranked companies that disclose it paid $376B in cash income taxes, worldwide and net of refunds. That’s cash actually paid, not the accounting tax expense, and it isn’t only U.S. federal tax. SpaceX and DoorDash don’t report a five-year figure we could verify, so they aren’t included. Each company’s figure and SEC source is in its row.

It's equity market value added: what investors would pay for these companies today, above the book value of shareholders' capital, minus everything the founders hold. Three honest caveats. It reflects expectations about the future, so it moves with the market. It omits value already inside book equity, including retained profits (Berkshire is the extreme case). And a company's value is built with executives, employees and investors; crediting it to the founders who started the company and still serve it is a way of looking at the numbers, not an economic law. Two accounting quirks cut the other way: companies that spend heavily on research expense it rather than booking it as capital, which makes their figure larger, and buybacks shrink book equity over time. Buybacks don't inflate the figure on the day they happen, because the cash paid out lowers market cap and book equity by the same amount.

We don’t split his net worth between the two. We charge each company his actual stake from its filings: his SpaceX shares from its IPO prospectus ($895B), and his Tesla shares including options and unvested award shares from his April 2026 filing ($425B). Together that’s $1.32T, more than his $923B Forbes net worth, so his figure comes out lower than if we had used net worth.

His math was Amazon’s market value minus his own stake. We also subtract the $552B of capital on Amazon’s books, which investors paid in or the company kept from profits, and we charge him his full $368B Forbes net worth instead of just his roughly 8% stake. That leaves $1.76T. Our method is meant to come in under the founders’ own claims.

They did, and that capital is subtracted. Book equity, the accounting value of what investors paid in plus profits kept, less losses, dividends and buybacks, comes off the top. What's left is value beyond that capital and belongs to the companies' other owners (see "Who exactly are the others?"). Investors who sold along the way took their gains in cash, which this measure doesn't count.

Market value is what investors will pay today, so it rises and falls. We price everything on one dated close and update every Saturday using Friday's closing prices. If prices fall, the list falls with them, and the founders' own wealth falls just as fast.

Co-founders share their company's figure, and each entry says who shares it. The totals at the top count every company once.

That is why we rank only founders who are still at the company, and why founders who left, like Bill Gates, appear in a separate unranked section. Founders who are still there kept the company independent and still shape it. Credit goes to the company they started; the list doesn't claim they did it alone.

Warren Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway, a failing textile mill, in 1965. Howard Schultz bought Starbucks when it had 11 stores, the Rales brothers built Danaher from a real estate trust, and Elon Musk joined Tesla as its first major investor. Each built the company that exists today, so we list them as founding operators and apply the same math.

Because the rule cuts both ways. His Forbes net worth includes the proceeds from VMware and other holdings, and we subtract all of it from Dell Technologies. A list that only flatters its subjects would not be worth reading.

Because Berkshire almost never pays dividends. Sixty years of profit stays inside the company as book equity, and our formula subtracts every dollar of book equity as capital. Shareholders still own that value; this method just doesn't count it as created. Few companies are penalized by this as heavily as Berkshire.

Bezos owns about 8% of Amazon, but we subtract his full $371 billion net worth, which is larger.

No company discloses how many of its employees became millionaires, so any count would be a guess. We show something every company does report instead: the stock it paid employees over the last five fiscal years, as accounting expense at grant-date value. That is not what employees ultimately realized, which can be far more or far less.

Their living founders are not on the Forbes billionaires list, or no longer work at the company. Steve Wozniak, for example, is not a billionaire and has had no operating role at Apple since 1985. See who's not here, and why.