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Billionaires are not very popular with the American public, according to a recent survey. And one of the reasons may be that they don’t want to reciprocate.
According to a study by Forbes magazine, the five richest billionaires have donated less than 1% of their net worth to charity. This is a data point that Randall Lane, the magazine’s chief content officer, shared in a recent TED talk.
To reward and encourage billionaires, Forbes has released a new ranking of the richest people on the planet, categorized not only by their net worth, but also by the value of everything they have donated.
The True Net Worth ranking, released on April 20, recalculates the wealth of the richest billionaires and estimates how rich they would be if they gave nothing to charity.
After all, the top of the billionaire list would be much different without philanthropy.
Here are Forbes’ new top five when considering philanthropy
Although Elon Musk has given away only a small portion of his wealth, with an estimated net worth of $858 billion, he would still rank among the richest people in the world.
However, Microsoft founder Bill Gates jumps to second place on the true net worth list when his charitable donations are taken into account. Forbes estimates that the wealth Gates donated during his lifetime would be worth $356 billion if he kept it and invested it, giving him a theoretical net worth of $464 billion.
Gates, by contrast, ranks 19th.th In the original World Richest Man List, his current net worth is $108 billion.
Taking into account his philanthropy, investor Warren Buffett ranks as the third richest billionaire by net worth, with a theoretical net worth of $363 billion. Buffett was ranked 9th on the original list of billionaires.
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the second and third richest people in the world, have fallen to fourth and fifth place on the true net worth list. They donate to charity, but not on the scale of Mr. Gates or Mr. Buffett.
The fourth and fifth richest billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer in the top five of the sorted list.
The True Net Worth ranking was born out of a “love and desire to support entrepreneurial capitalism,” Lane said in an interview. “Part of it is the idea that with great success comes great responsibility.”
Gates and Buffett co-founded the Giving Pledge
Gates and Buffett, two of the most prominent donors on Forbes’ new list, are co-founders of the Giving Pledge, a 2010 initiative to encourage the ultra-wealthy to divert more than half of their wealth to philanthropy.
Since 2010, the original group of 57 pledgers has grown to more than 250 donors from 30 countries.
Elon Musk signed the donation pledge, along with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. But they don’t give as generously as Gates or Buffett.
A 2025 report from the Progressive Policy Institute found that many Giving Pledge participants are not fulfilling their commitments. Of the 57 original pledgers, 32 are still billionaires, making them 283% wealthier in total since signing, the report said.
Vera Devern, director of IPS’s philanthropy reform initiative, gave conditional praise to Forbes’ new rankings.
“I admire them for being so creative and leveraging their power,” she said, noting the appeal of the Forbes Billionaires list even for billionaires themselves, saying, “They have things that billionaires want but can’t buy.”
Forbes magazine ranks billionaires as “super philanthropists”
A new ranking from Forbes magazine features a group of “uber-philanthropist” billionaires who would be much richer if they invested all the wealth they gave away.
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife Mackenzie Scott has given up most of the 4% Amazon stock she received in their divorce. Forbes estimates that she would be worth $83 billion if she kept it all, which would have made her 26 years old.th the richest billionaire.
“No one has given away money faster than Scott,” Forbes reported, noting that she has given more than $26 billion to more than 2,500 organizations.
Lane said her example illustrates the power of “making change happen in real time” rather than leaving money in a private foundation where it can sit unused for years.
“At the end of the day, it’s about how much money you put to work and how quickly,” Lane said.
In his TED talk, Lane argued that Americans might like billionaires more if they spent more time and money on philanthropy.
The effort appears to have paid off for Buffett and Gates. They were rated higher than anyone else among the 10 richest Americans in a February 2025 Reuters poll.
