The wealth of the world's richest people increased by a record $2.2 trillion this year.

PANews reported on December 31 that, according to foreign media reports, an institutional billionaire index shows that the collective wealth of the world's 500 richest people increased by a record $2.2 trillion this year. The booming market across all sectors, from stocks to cryptocurrencies to precious metals, led to a surge in their asset values, bringing their total net worth to $11.9 trillion. Tech giants led the gains, with the fervor for artificial intelligence continuing to boost large-cap US stocks. About a quarter of all the wealth growth recorded by the institutional wealth index came from eight individuals, including Oracle (ORCL.N) Chairman Larry Ellison, Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet (GOOG.O) co-founder Larry Page, and Amazon (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos. However, it's worth noting that this is a smaller contribution than last year, when these eight billionaires accounted for 43% of the total gains.