Net worth of Trump inauguration attendees tops $1 trillion with world's richest in the crowd
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One of the things that made President Donald Trump's inauguration distinctive was the prominence of Silicon Valley elite. Easily identifiable were the world's three richest men - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. And that's not to mention some of the billionaires not placed directly in view of the cameras.
When the riches of the billionaire tech founders, millionaire business people and wealthy politicians are totted up there was more than $1trn - over a thousand billion - in the rotunda of the Capitol on Monday morning. The richest of them all, topping the Forbes real-time billionaires list, was Elon Musk.
The South African serial entrepreneur makes his money through ownership of electric car company Tesla and space exploration company Space X. His fortune is $433.9bn, according to Forbes. Next on the rich list is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $239.4bn through his ownership of company shares.
Mr Bezos' part-ownership of The Washington Post led to some speculation he played a role in the paper saying it would not endorse a candidate in the US election for the first time in 36 years. Third-richest on Forbes' list is Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, worth $211.8bn.
His company owns social networks Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The influence of changing political winds could be seen in Meta's recent decision to roll back fact-checking. While there was no sign of the world's fourth-richest man - Oracle founder Larry Ellison - the man who occupies the fifth spot, Bernard Arnault, was there with his family.
