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- Getting on the list of America's richest people got even more cutthroat this year.
- To make Forbes' 2023 list of the 400 richest Americans, you needed a net worth of $2.9 billion.
- More than 350 billionaires didn't make the cut, including Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Evan Spiegel.
"I'm really rich," Donald Trump said in 2015 when he announced his first presidential bid.
Really rich, sure, but not one of the richest people in the country.
Forbes' released its annual ranking of the 400 richest Americans on Tuesday, and Trump didn't make the cut. Nor did other famous billionaires like Kim Kardashian, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.
A record-tying net worth of at least $2.9 billion was needed in order to crack this year's list — up from $2.7 billion last year — which meant more than 350 American billionaires were left off.
Trump's net worth currently sits at $2.6 billion, per Forbes, down 19% from last year due tumbling property values — a large part of his fortune is tied up in New York real estate — and waning interest in his social media platform Truth Social. Trump has been a fixture of the list for much of the past three decades. He fell short in 2021, but rejoined last year when Truth Social took off.
Kardashian, the wealthiest member of the Kardashian-Jenner family with a net worth of $1.7 billion, also didn't make the list. She first joined the billionaires' club in 2021 thanks to her shapewear company Skims and beauty line, but has never been rich enough to be included in the Forbes 400.
Other celebrities who didn't make the cut include Oprah Winfrey with a net worth of $2.8 billion, Jay-Z at $2.5 billion, and LeBron James at $1 billion. This is the third consecutive year Oprah didn't meet the cutoff after appearing on the list for 25 straight years, according to Forbes.
In business, Tim Cook and Sheryl Sandberg, each with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, both missed the cut. Other notable names left off include Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman Charles Munger with a net worth of $2.5 billion, CNN founder Ted Turner at $2.5 billion, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel at $2.5 billion, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman at $2.2 billion, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen at $1.8 billion.
Collectively, the 400 richest Americans on Forbes' list are worth a combined $4.5 trillion — $500 billion more than they were a year ago, thanks to stock market gains in the tech sector as a result of the growing interest in AI.
Much of this wealth is concentrated in the list's top 20 entrants, led once again by Elon Musk with $251 billion. The top 20 richest Americans are richer than ever before, collectively worth $1.9 trillion, according to Forbes.