There are more new, self-made billionaires being minted in the United States than anywhere else, according to new data from UBS, in what has been something of a bumper year for newly created wealth.
According to the firm’s Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025, 196 people became billionaires for the first time in 2025 through their own means, with a collective holding of $386.5 billion. This is up from 161 in 2024 and 137 in 2023. Eighty-nine of those new billionaires are based in the U.S., taking the country’s total up to 924 — about a third of the global total.
In the U.S. this rise can be attributed to business creation and entrepreneurial accomplishment, particularly in the tech sector. Investors in companies like Nvidia and Oracle have seen particularly large gains in recent years. UBS found that most of the new billionaires in Western Europe, on the other hand, inherited their wealth.
Charles Otton, head of ultra-high net worth plus and head of global family and institutional wealth, Americas, and one of the authors of the report, said that this difference “should be a surprise to nobody.”
“It is a reflection of the diverse fortunes of the two continents,” he said. “It is startling how much wealth has been created in in the U.S., and it is all concentrated in tech, consumer, retail, and, to a lesser extent, industrials.”
But more wealth also has been passed on through inheritance this year than ever before. Ninety-one people became billionaires this year, inheriting a total of $297.8 billion, a 36 percent increase over 2024’s $218.9 billion,. And the majority of that occurred in Western Europe. The region accounted for almost two thirds of the total, compared to $86.5 billion in North America.
There are now more than 3,000 billionaires globally, holding $15.8 trillion in wealth.
UBS made the generational wealth transfer the theme of the report. Otton said that clients are taking the responsibility of passing their assets and wealth on to younger generations more seriously than ever before.
UBS forecasted that billionaires are likely to transfer approximately $6.9 trillion of wealth globally by 2040, with $5.9 trillion expected to pass to their children.
“People are living longer and they're also more aware of their own mortality— 58 percent of those who expect to live longer plan to update wills and trusts regularly. I don’t think we saw that in the recent past.”
The survey also indicates that billionaires are coming back to private equity and private credit, marking a slight change from the firm’s family office report in March, which suggested the opposite.
