Nearly a dozen years after he declared himself “hip-hop’s first billionaire,” it seems Dr. Dre finally is one, according to Forbes’ 2026 Billionaires list.
“They need to update the Forbes list, shit just changed,” Dre said in May of 2014, after he and Jimmy Iovine sold their Beats by Dre business to Apple for $3 billion (which was eventually merged into Apple Music).
However, it’s a very long list — and a vivid demonstration of the vast earnings gap between the 1% and the rest of the world — and Dre is tied for 3332nd on the world’s richest list, with Jared Kushner, Rihanna, steel magnate Richard Teets Jr. and lots of others.
He also didn’t make Forbes’ splashy painting of some of the world’s richest and most toxic people (many of whom presumably can’t stand each other) gathered together at a party on a super-yacht, including President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg and others, with two of the three pictured Black people (Jay-Z and Beyoncé) off in the left corner, with Oprah relegated to the balcony. Beyoncé is also new to the list, although her billionaire status was announced several months ago.
According to the announcement, Dre joins “an elite group of celebrities who have recently crossed the three-comma threshold” — of the 22 billionaire entertainers Forbes has identified, nearly half were added in the last three years, and he becomes just the sixth musician, joining Beyoncé and Jay-Z, as well as Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Rihanna. The latter three do not appear in the illustration either.
Elon Musk tops the Billionaires list for the second year in a row and is the richest person ever recorded, worth an estimated $839 billion, the announcement states. His net worth skyrocketed by half of a trillion dollars from last year, thanks to a rise in the value of Tesla, and SpaceX which is aiming to go public in 2026. Musk is the first person ever recorded to reach the $800 billion mark, as he moves toward becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
“It’s the year of the billionaire,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes Senior Editor, Wealth. “The planet added more than one billionaire per day over the past twelve months as the AI-powered stock market boom boosted fortunes to previously unimaginable heights.”
Larry Page, cofounder of Google, follows far behind Musk, in the No. 2 spot with an estimated net worth of $257 billion, followed by his cofounder Sergey Brin at No. 3 ($237 billion). Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos holds the No. 4 spot ($224 billion) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($222 billion) rounds out the top 5.
President Donald Trump’s fortune increased by 27%, to an estimated $6.5 billion, thanks largely to crypto dealings and his New York fraud penalty being thrown out, according to the announcement. He ranks No. 645 worldwide, although that position may be imperiled by the growing global impact of his war of choice in Iran.
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