Top 15 Business Tycoons We All Should Learn From in 2024

Updated Jan 11, 2023.
Business Tycoons

The business world is full of tycoons (the big fishes and major players). Without these businessmen and women willing to take big risks in the business world, the breakthroughs experienced in the business world will not exist.

Business tycoons are a source of inspiration for many budding entrepreneurs and business owners. There is a lot to learn from the personalities and achievements of these business tycoons.

This article will discuss 15 top business tycoons worth learning from in 2022.

Let's get started.

What is a Business Tycoon?

The term tycoon is from the Japanese word ‘Taikun,’ which means Great Lord. A business tycoon, also known as a business magnate, is an individual who has acquired immense wealth due to the ownership of various business enterprises.

In other words, a business tycoon can also be an individual that possesses dominant or monopolistic power within their industry.

Business tycoons are major players in the global economy. They own various businesses that function globally and have great power and influence in their country and beyond. Examples of notable business tycoons include Henry Ford, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates.

These business tycoons did not have wealth handed to them, but they had to build their businesses and career through hard work, focus, discipline, determination, and dedication.

List of Top Business Tycoons

1. Elon Reeve Musk

Company: SpaceX and Tesla

Elon Musk is the product architect and Chief Executive Officer of Tesla and is often described as a man of the future. He co-founded OpenAI and Neuralink and is a renowned entrepreneur and investor.

His company, Tesla, is regarded as the most valuable automotive company in the world. The company is known for selling home solar batteries and electric vehicles. Tesla is located in Austin, Texas, and is well known and trusted for its quality products worldwide.

Apart from being the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX. SpaceX is a company approved by NASA to build rockets to resupply the International Space Station. Musk is also a shareholder in Twitter.

Presently, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. As of June 2022, his net worth was estimated to be roughly US$219 billion.

SpaceX's ambition as a company is to substantially reduce the cost of space travel while significantly increasing such access's reliability.

Elon Musk is a man of focus and determination. Undoubtedly, he is one of the greatest business tycoons that has walked the shores of this planet. His integrity towards his dreams and set goals is truly admirable.

2. Jeff Bezos

Company: Amazon

Amazon is an e-commerce solution founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, now the CEO of this multi-million dollar company that started in his garage in Seattle.

Jeff Bezos is the second richest man in the world and has a net worth of f US$171 billion. He is a well-known retail entrepreneur, investor, chairman, and CEO of Amazon.

Bezos also has a space company named Blue Origin which is working on building and launching reusable space rockets to help reduce the cost of space travel.

Blue Origin, Boeing, SpaceX, and NASA are collaborating on projects to make it possible for humans to reside on the moon by 2024, with other colonies on Mars by the 2030s.

These companies are also into robotics and space technology, all focused on making life better for people worldwide.

3. Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault

Company: LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton)

Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault is the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH, a business tycoon, art collector, and a French billionaire with a net worth of $158 billion.

Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault is a man that is concerned about the welfare of the people. He has contributed greatly to the world's provision and maintenance of high-quality and traditional values.

Arnault has made things easier for many people and has been a major source of inspiration for many entrepreneurs.

Among his notable accomplishments and goals is his plan to create 1,000 jobs in the next five years for unemployed or underemployed people. Louis Vuitton is in on this project and is providing an intense educational training program to American workers, launched in 2019.

4. Bill Gates

Company: Microsoft

Bill Gates is the 4th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $129 billion in 2022. He is a major shareholder in Microsoft. Apart from being just a shareholder, he is also a co-founder of Microsoft, the largest software company in the world.

Microsoft is a manufacturer of personal computers, sells video gaming consoles and related peripherals, provides email services through its Exchange server, and publishes books through Microsoft Press.

He is the founder of Cascade Investment LLC, an American holding company and private investment organization located in Kirkland, Washington, United States. Cascade Investment LLC holds $55.9 billion in private and public assets and $55.3 billion in cash.

Bill Gates has been a major source of inspiration to various entrepreneurs worldwide and a role model for those in the tech world.

5. Warren Buffet

Company: Berkshire Hathaway

The CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway are Warren Edward Buffett, popularly known as the ‘Oracle of Omaha,' renowned business tycoon worthy of emulation.

Warren Buffett has a net worth of US $118 billion. He is still the most successful investor in the world. Buffett owns over 60 companies, such as Battery maker Duracell, insurer Geico, restaurant chain Dairy Queen and many more.

In 2010, Warren Buffet collaborated with Bill Gates to launch the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires around the world to commit to donating half of their wealth to charity.

Buffett is still one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, with many success stories, which is still a source of inspiration to investors of the next generation.

6. Larry Page

Company: Alphabet

Larry Page is a co-founder of Alphabet and Google. Apart from being a business tycoon, he is a computer scientist and an internet entrepreneur.

He is a board member of Alphabet and the sixth richest man in the world with a net worth of roughly $111 billion and other assets plus $14.6 billion in cash.

Larry Page became a billionaire in 2004 when Google stocks rose by roughly 50%. He invested early in a space exploration and asteroid mining company named Planetary Resources.

Planetary Resources was founded in 2009 by Larry. The company was later acquired by ConsenSys, a blockchain developer, in 2018 due to funding issues. Larry Edward Page loves flying vehicle firms and invests in Kitty Hawk and Opener.

7. Sergey Brin

Company: Alphabet & Google

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin, just like Larry Page, is an Internet entrepreneur and computer scientist from the United States, a co-founder of Google, and former CEO of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.

Before Sundar Pichai took over as CEO in 2019, he held the same position at Alphabet holding company since it was founded in 2015. Sergey Brin is the seventh richest person in the world, with a net worth of $107 billion as of June 2022.

For Brin, he spent most of 2019 with X, Alphabet Research Division, developing new techs like Waymo self-driving cars and Google Glass smart glasses. He donated millions of dollars to Parkinson’s disease research by partnering with the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

8. Larry Ellison

Company: Oracle

Lawrence Joseph Ellison is the executive chairman, co-founder, and Chief Technology Officer of Oracle Corporation, a software firm founded in 1977 with a net worth of $106 billion. He is an American businessman, philanthropist, and entrepreneur.

Larry made so much impact on the lives of people around the world through various philanthropic activities, such as his pledge of $200 million in May 2016 for a cancer treatment center at the University of Southern California.

He is known for his unique creative ability and profound ability to think outside the box constantly. Larry displayed these abilities in 2019 when he introduced the first-ever autonomous OS, Oracle Autonomous Linux, on the cloud.

9. Gautam Adani

Company: Adani Group

Gautam Adani is the founder of Adani Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate in Ahmedabad founded in 1988. As of March 2022, Gautam Adani surpassed Mukesh Ambani as Asia’s richest person.

After he dropped out of college, he worked in the diamond industry and owned the largest port operator, a coal dealer, and a closely held thermal coal producer.

Gautam Adani is a renowned business tycoon worth $98.1 billion and has a 75 percent investment in Adani Power, Adani Enterprises, and Adani Transmissions, organizations within the Adani Group.

Furthermore, he has a 61 percent share in Adani Green Energy, a 65 percent stake in Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone, and a 37 percent stake in Adani Total Gas through his Adani Group.

Gautam Adani purchased a 74% share in Mumbai International Airport in 2020, India’s second busiest airport.

10. Steve Ballmer

Company: Los Angeles Clippers

As the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer left his MBA program at Stanford University to work at Microsoft in 1980 due to Bill Gates’s persuasion.

As of 2000, he was the 31st employee and served as the CEO till 2014 before stepping down. Ballmer was responsible for Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype in 2011.

Steve Ballmer has always been a sports lover, Basketball to be precise, which led to his purchase of an American basketball, the Los Angeles Clippers, in 2014 for $2 billion. He has a net worth of $91.4 billion.

Ballmer is still a shareholder in Microsoft, a software company responsible for producing the Windows operating systems, Surface tablet computers, Xbox game consoles, and many more.

11. Mukesh Ambani

Company: Reliance Industries

Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is the chairman and a major stakeholder of Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), the most valuable firm by market value in India and a Fortune Global 500 corporation.

He is the Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd., a business tycoon from India, with a net worth of about $ 90.7 billion as of June 2022.

Ambani resides in the Antilia Building, one of the world's most expensive private mansions worth $1 billion.

He invested in sports by buying the Mumbai Indians of the Indian Premier League and founded a football league in India through Reliance called the Indian Football League. Forbes ranked him as the world’s richest sports owner in 2012.

12. Michael Bloomberg

Company: Bloomberg L.P.

Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the CEO and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P. He controls most of the company. As of June 2020, he was proposed to control 88% of the company and has an estimated net worth of $82 billion.

Bloomberg is a successful businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author from the United States. As a politician, he ran for the president of the United States as a Democrat in 2020 and has served the people of New York City by functioning as their Mayor from 2002 to 2013.

He signed the Giving Pledge in August 2010 and has given a total of $9.5 billion since then, including $3.3 billion in 2019.

13. Carlos Slim Helu

Company: America Movil

Carlos Slim Helu is a 78 years old American business tycoon who owns over 200 leading companies in industries, which range from communication to retail and banking.

He owns the biggest mobile phone company in Latin America and Grupo Carso Conglomerate Company, which includes many retailers and restaurants, among other companies.

Carlos Slim Helu is collaborating with a group of successful entrepreneurs involved in properly drafting the national infrastructure program (PNI) 2019-2024. He has a net worth of $81 billion and is the 14th world’s richest person.

14. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers

Company: L’Oreal

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers has a net worth of $74.8 billion as of June 2022. She is the world’s wealthiest woman and the owner of L’Oreal, the world's largest cosmetics company, and she owns 33% of the company.

Meyers heads the holding company that owns the family’s shareholding. Lancome and Garnier are owned by L’Oreal, which had revenue of 32.3 billion euros ($38.2 billion) in 2021. She is a successful businesswoman, pianist, philanthropist, writer, and billionaire heiress.

Looking at her family tree and its impact on her wealth, Françoise comes from a wealthy family. She is the only child of Liliane Bettencourt and Eugène Schueller's granddaughter, the founder of L’Oreal.

15. Mark Zuckerberg

Company: Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook's CEO and co-founder, a widely used social media platform. Facebook acquired Instagram & WhatsApp, the two most popular social networking & messenger apps. As a philanthropist, Zuckerberg pledged to donate 99% of his Facebook holdings toward charity. His life and achievement have been a major source of inspiration and encouragement to people worldwide, especially youths. Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $67.3 billion.

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Martin Luenendonk

Editor at FounderJar

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.