Bill Gates leads Forbes' list of the world's richest people for the 13th time in a row. The Microsoft co-founder's wealth is estimated at $56 billion. Following Gates are Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified company at which you would have to invest close to $109,000 to own just one share of common stock. Following on the heels of Buffett, who is estimated to own about $52 billion, is Carlos Slim Helu, who controls a telecom empire in Mexico and has arrived at $49 billion. The billionaire list now ranks a total 946 billionaires who own a combined $3.5 trillion. There were 178 new entries in the list this year and especially countries such as Russia (53 billionaires) and India (35) are establishing a presence among the world's richest people.

The U.S. tech industry is represented throughout the list, for example with Oracle founder Larry Ellison at #11 ($21.5 billion), Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at #26 ($16.6 billion each), Michael Dell at #30 ($15.8 billion), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at #31 ($15.0 billion), Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar at #76 ($8.8 billion), Google CEO Eric Schmidt at #116 ($6.2 billion), Apple CEO Steve Jobs at #132 ($5.2 billion), Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at #188 ($4.4 billion) and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who is also known as author of "Moore's Law" at #243 ($3.6 billion).