- Taylor Swift, Magic Johnson, and Sam Altman are among the new additions to Forbes' billionaire list.
- Swift's "The Eras Tour," Johnson's business deals, and Altman's startup bets have paid off hugely.
Taylor Swift, Magic Johnson, and Sam Altman are among the 265 new faces on Forbes' annual list of billionaires, published this week.
The full rankings feature a record 2,781 people, worth an unprecedented $14.2 trillion between them as of March 8.
Swift ($1.1 billion) has joined the three-comma club thanks to "The Eras Tour," her ongoing marathon of 152 shows in 54 cities across five continents.
The global concert tour has generated more than $1 billion in revenue, and has been turned into a movie that premiered in AMC Theatres before moving to Disney+.
The singer-songwriter's net worth also reflects the estimated value of her music catalog — which includes hits like "Blank Space" and "Anti-Hero" — and her real estate holdings.
Johnson ($1.2 billion) is best known for leading the Los Angeles Lakers to five championship titles in the 1980s. But the basketball star has made most of his fortune since retiring.
He owns small stakes in the Washington Commanders, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Sparks, and Los Angeles FC. He's also made lucrative investments in Starbucks franchises, movie theaters, and real estate over the years.
Altman ($1 billion) is the CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT and an artificial-intelligence pioneer.
His inclusion on the rich list is a product of his bets on nascent companies when he was Y Combinator's president; an early wager on Stripe; a position in Reddit, which went public this month; and a stake in Helion, a nuclear fusion startup.
The wealthiest person to debut this year is Andrea Pignataro ($27.5 billion), the ex-Salomon Brothers bond trader behind ION Group, a financial-software company. His net worth reflects his ION stake plus other assets, including an assortment of high-end villas and hotels in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The boom in AI, cryptocurrencies, and other technologies helped several people achieve billionaire status this year. That group includes Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang ($6.1 billion), Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su ($1.3 billion), Tesla and SpaceX investor Antonio Gracias ($1.1 billion), Nvidia director Harvey Jones ($1 billion), and Giancarlo Devasini ($9.2 billion), who worked as a plastic surgeon before launching crypto giant Tether.
Other newcomers to Forbes' list include Todd Graves ($9.1 billion), the founder of Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers; Dick Wolf ($1.2 billion), the producer of TV shows including "Law & Order,"; Christian Louboutin ($1.2 billion), the fashion designer behind the signature red-soled high heels; and three cofounders of fast-fashion titan Shein, worth $4.2 billion each.