The world's richest billionaires get a lot of attention for what they do and how they make money.
You've probably heard of people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett. According to Forbes, the current ten richest people in the world have a combined net worth of approximately US$1.8 trillion. That's an incredible amount of concentrated wealth for a few people.
But their humungous wealth has happened because of one key reason: they own shares in the businesses they helped become huge successes.
Most of the wealth of each of these ultra-billionaires has been catapulted higher by the strong performance of the businesses they led. Let's look at which companies these wealthy individuals are affiliated with.
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Richest billionaires in the world
These are the current estimated wealth figures from Forbes for the ten richest people in the world.
Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$330.1 billion thanks to Tesla and Space X. His wealth was also helped years ago by his PayPal stake.
Larry Ellison is the world's second-richest person, with a net worth of US$226.9 billion, thanks to Oracle.
Jeff Bezos is the world's third richest person, with a net worth of US$223.3 billion, thanks to his Amazon holdings.
Mark Zuckerberg is the fourth richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$198.7 billion because of Meta Platforms (Facebook).
Bernard Arnault is the world's fifth richest person, with a net worth of US$160.4 billion, thanks to his position in LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton and many other luxury brands.
Warren Buffett has a net worth of US$150.6 billion, making him the sixth richest person in the world. However, he'd be higher on this list if he still held all of the Berkshire Hathaway shares he has donated for philanthropic purposes.
Larry Page is the seventh richest person on this list, with a net worth of US$140.4 billion thanks to his Alphabet (Google) stake.
Sergey Brin is the eighth richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$134.3 billion. His wealth also comes from Alphabet.
Steve Ballmer is the ninth richest person with a net worth of US$124.8 billion. He was an important part of Microsoft's journey and was the CEO for a period of time. Most of his wealth is tied up in Microsoft shares.
Amancio Ortega is the tenth richest person with a net worth of US$123.9 billion. He was a founder of Inditex, which is best known for Zara.
For those wondering, Bill Gates is 14th on the list, with a net worth of US$107.2 billion.
How we can become wealthy with ASX shares
Reaching $1 billion is a huge amount of money. Unless someone is already extremely wealthy, I'd say that to get to $1 billion, it'd require starting your own business that becomes a huge success in Australia or internationally.
However, we can utilise the power of shares to benefit from the scaling-up of businesses, even if it's at a much smaller scale than the above billionaires.
Some businesses on the ASX have delivered enormous returns, but even achieving average returns could be appealing.
For example, if someone put $10,000 into an investment that delivered an average return per annum of 10%, it would double in less than eight years. If that level of return is continued, it would double again in another eight years, and so on.
Imagine putting more than $10,000 in work into this scenario. Regularly investing every month could create very pleasing results.
It's also possible to find investments that can return more than an average of 10% per annum. Of course, past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. But, for example, the BetaShares Global Quality Leaders ETF (ASX: QLTY) has returned an average of 15% per annum since it started in November 2018.
