#20

Mukesh Ambani

Source of wealth: Diversified

69 years Male Diversified 🇮🇳 IN

Net Worth

...

Earnings per second

...

Biography

Mukesh Ambani chairs and runs $125 billion (revenue) Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom, retail, media and financial services.

Reliance was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father's death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divvied up the family empire.

Reliance's telecom and broadband service Jio has over 500 million subscribers and Ambani has said he plans to list it in 2026. In 2023, Reliance listed its finance arm, Jio Financial Services.

Ambani's three children joined the board of Reliance in 2023. Son Akash heads Jio; daughter Isha oversees retail and financial services; and younger son Anant is in the energy business.

In 2026, Ambani announced plans for an $110 billion investment on AI infrastructure to be built across the country over the next seven years.

Perspective on their fortune

Gold

Everyday luxury

A Mukesh Ambani's fortune is equivalent to 665 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.

A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.

Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3

Mukesh Ambani could buy 177,227,060 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!

And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 32 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Mukesh Ambani will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.

🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚 🚚

While billions of people struggle to access basic healthcare, education, and research, a single individual could fund entire national systems for centuries.

🏥

Health

The price of life

Let's compare Mukesh Ambani's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country

Mukesh Ambani could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 44.4 years.

But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country

At the other extreme, Mukesh Ambani could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 19.6 years

📚

Education

Buying the future

Lowest education spending

Mukesh Ambani could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 29.0 years.

Highest education spending

But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Mukesh Ambani could pay for it in full for 39.4 years.

🔬

Research

The monopoly of progress

Lowest research spending

Mukesh Ambani could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 166.0 years.

Highest research spending

But even if we compare the total wealth of Mukesh Ambani with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 3.7 years.