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Mapped: The Cities Where the World’s Billionaires Were Born
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Key Takeaways
- New York tops the list with 69 billionaires born in the city—more than any other globally.
- Three of the next top billionaire birthplaces are in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mumbai.
- A German town of under 40,000 people ranks alongside global megacities.
New York stands out as the world’s leading billionaire birthplace, but it’s far from the only global hub shaping extreme wealth. Across Asia, cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mumbai also rank among the top origins of the world’s richest individuals.
This world map highlights the cities around the world where at least 10 billionaires have been born, utilizing a 2026 PlayersTime analysis of the Forbes Real-Time List of Billionaires.
The map spans the most common cities of birth of 1,680 billionaires, revealing interesting regional and continental trends in geographic distribution.
New York: The Birthplace of Success
New York is known as the home of more billionaires than any other city on Earth, but its reputation as the global hub of success starts early.
Among the analyzed billionaires, 69 came from the Big Apple, more than any other city worldwide and more than the total from the next five U.S. cities combined.
The following table showcases in which cities most billionaires have been born.
| City | Number of Billionaires Born |
|---|---|
 New York |
69 |
 Hong Kong |
57 |
 Singapore |
30 |
 Mumbai |
28 |
 Moscow |
25 |
 Milan |
16 |
| Los Angeles |
16 |
 Rio de Janeiro |
15 |
| Chicago |
15 |
| San Francisco |
13 |
 Montreal |
13 |
| Toronto |
12 |
| Philadelphia |
12 |
 Hangzhou |
12 |
 Taipei |
11 |
 Stockholm |
11 |
 Istanbul |
11 |
| Boston |
11 |
 Ingelheim am Rhein |
10 |
 Athens |
10 |
As the largest city in the U.S., New York has been a global center for lucrative industries such as finance, entrepreneurship, and the arts for decades. The city thus occupies a singular role within global entrepreneurship and generational wealth alike.
The wealthiest native New Yorker is Larry Ellison, the chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation and the sixth-richest person in the world owing to his nearly $200 billion net worth. Ellison was born in the Bronx in 1944, although he was raised by adoptive parents in Chicago’s South Shore.
The Other Leading Billionaire Birthplaces
Following New York, the next three cities from which the most billionaires come are all located in Asia: Hong Kong (57), Singapore (30), and Mumbai (28). Many of the billionaires from these metropolises built their fortunes in either the U.S., China, or India.
While Chinese and Indian megacities may be expected, Taiwan’s capital city Taipei (11) is also well-represented as a billionaire birthplace, with the same number of billionaires within the sample size as Boston and Stockholm.
The seventh-wealthiest individual within the Forbes list, Jensen Huang, is a Taipei native. Huang was born in the Taiwanese capital in 1963 and at age 30 founded Nvidia, the world’s largest company by market capitalization today. He remains president and CEO of the technology company and has a net worth of over $150 billion.
A Strange European Outlier
Most of the best-represented cities around the world are logical economic centers, from Moscow (25) to Chicago (15). While no African cities appeared to be the birthplace of over 10 billionaires, Brazil’s former capital of Rio de Janeiro (15) did provide the sole South American entry.
One more surprising city was Ingelheim am Rhein (10), located in southwestern Germany. Unlike major metropolises like Los Angeles (13) or Istanbul (11), Ingelheim is a small town of fewer than 40,000 inhabitants.
The explanation behind the high number of billionaires born in this town comes from the history of Boehringer Ingelheim, the world’s largest privately-held pharmaceutical company, which was founded in Ingelheim in 1885 and continues to be headquartered there.
As some of Germany’s richest citizens, many members of the Boehringer family were born in the town, allowing Ingelheim to punch far above its weight as a billionaire birthplace.
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