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Hong Kong retained its status as the world’s second-leading billionaire city despite a fall in its billionaire population last year, according to a report by data firm Altrata.
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Home to 106 billionaires, down by 2 from the year prior, the SAR topped the leaderboard in Asia, maintaining its edge over Singapore, Beijing, and Shenzhen, the Billionaire Census 2026 showed.
The city’s billionaires’ overall net worth, at US$319 billion (HK$2.49 trillion), maintained a rising trend, but persistent weakness in the real estate sector and comparatively low portfolio exposure to AI-driven wealth gains led to a dip in billionaire population last year, the report said.
New York, on the other hand, saw its billionaire number up by 12 to 164, a population that was even larger than in countries other than China, Germany, and the US itself
Wealth trends tied to the AI investment boom were a major driver of activity across the US city’s private capital markets, family offices and ultra-prime real estate, it said, adding that sharp fluctuations in AI-exposed tech stocks – and, by extension, in individual billionaire wealth – will remain a feature of global markets in the coming years.
The global billionaire population surged by 8.2 percent to 3,795 individuals in 2025, with their wealth soaring 12.8 percent to US$15.1 trillion, both new records.
The planet’s 29 richest people, each with fortunes above US$50 billion, had a combined net worth of US$4.1 trillion, or a staggering 27 percent of all billionaire wealth, Altrata said.
By country, the US, home to a third of the global billionaire class, recorded an 11.5 percent rise in 2025 to 1,265 billionaires, more than three times the level in China, the second-ranked country with 363 billionaires.
Germany, Europe’s largest wealth market, registered the fastest growth of 20 percent in billionaire numbers of all the leading 15 countries, but did not have city representation in the top 15, reflecting a wider dispersion of private wealth across its urban centers.
Over the next decade, a total of US$6.6 trillion of billionaire wealth will be passed on to billionaires’ spouses and children, the report said, adding that the current average age of expected adult child heirs is 48.
Some 23 percent of expected adult child heirs already work alongside their billionaire parent in the primary family business, it added.
