Billionaire wealth has hit a new peak — and last year, the wealth of the world’s richest grew three times faster than ever before.
By November 2025, billionaires had accumulated $2.5 trillion more wealth than at the same time in 2024, enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over, according to an analysis released by Oxfam International on Monday. It’s a surge that coincided with not just wealth, but power — with Oxfam reporting that today, billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than the average person.
“This is happening in a world where 50% of people live in poverty, and one in four actually sleeps hungry,” Amitabh Behar, Oxfam’s executive director, told Devex during the World Economic Forum.