America has never had as many billionaires as it does now — and the number is only growing.
The SpaceX IPO resulted in one of the greatest wealth increases in history, turning Elon Musk’s estimated net worth of over $800 billion before the company went public into the world’s first-ever trillion-dollar-plus fortune.
While the scale of Musk’s fortune is unprecedented by all measures, it also raises the question of how historic figures, largely considered America’s richest, such as the Gilded Age industrialists, compare with the richest people today.
That is to say: Who are the richest Americans of all time?
In many historical calculations of net worth, individual fortunes weren’t measured in isolation; instead, they were compared to the US GDP at the time.
When the US economy was much smaller than it is today, the wealthiest families and individuals carried more weight in the economy than others during more prosperous times.
One of the richest Americans of all time is widely considered to be Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth, at its peak in 1937, was equal to 1.5% of the country’s GDP. His estimated net worth would be around $512.7 billion today, when adjusted for inflation.
Elon Musk’s current wealth, however, has now far eclipsed that of Rockefeller’s.
To identify some of the richest Americans of all time, we consulted Forbes’ 2007 list of history’s wealthiest figures, based on estimates by economist Peter Bernstein. It calculated individuals’ wealth at their peak and compared it to the country’s GDP at the time to convert it to 2006 dollars. This was then adjusted to today’s dollars using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.
For living individuals, we cited Forbes’ estimated net worths as of June 16, 2026.
While estimates of historical wealth may not be perfect, they help paint a picture of the wealth enjoyed by some of America’s most notable business figures and put it in context with today’s billionaires.
Here are 29 of the wealthiest Americans in history — and how modern-day tech magnates rank among them.
Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937)
Bettmann via Getty Images
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
Getty Images/Getty Images
Jay Gould (1836-1892)
Bettmann/Getty Images
Sam Walton (1918-1992)
Paul Matthews/Fairfax Media via Getty Images
Marshall Field (1834-1906)
Bettmann/Getty Images
Bill Gates
Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Thomas Peterffy
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Michael Bloomberg
PAC NYC)
Frederick Weyerhaeuser (1834-1914)
Bain News Service/Library of Congress
Steve Ballmer
Leon Bennett/Getty Images
Alice Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Alexander Turney Stewart (1803-1876)
The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images
Jim Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Richard B. Mellon (1870-1933)
: HUM Images/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Rob Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Warren Buffett
Johannes EISELE / AFP via Getty Images
Stephen Girard (1750-1831)
Icas94 / De Agostini via Getty Images
Jensen Huang
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
John Jacob Astor (1763-1848)
Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg
Taylor Hill/Getty Images
Michael Dell
KikeRincon/Europa Press via Getty Images
Larry Ellison
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Jeff Bezos
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Sergey Brin
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877)
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Larry Page
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Elon Musk
ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP/Getty Images
