Forbes has released its definitive list of the 250 greatest living American innovators, ranking Elon Musk at number one for his unprecedented success in scaling disruptive multibillion-dollar enterprises.
Forbes has named Elon Musk America’s top living innovator in a new ranking released Thursday for the nation’s 250th anniversary. The list prioritizes business builders who “bring ideas to market and reshape industries.” Judges and AI tools scored nearly 1,000 nominees, highlighting that Musk is the “only person in history” to found five multibillion-dollar companies in different sectors.
The publication noted that over one-third of the final 250 are women and people of color, with many being immigrants. High-profile figures like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Sam Altman follow Musk in the top ten. Forbes emphasized the rigorous criteria used, stating the panel included industry experts to ensure the list reflected true disruption and commercial impact.
• No. 1: Elon Musk (54) – Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, Boring Co.
• No. 2: Jeff Bezos (61) – Amazon, AWS, Blue Origin.
• No. 3: Bill Gates (70) – Microsoft, Philanthropy.
• No. 4: George Lucas (81) – Star Wars, Industrial Light & Magic.
• No. 5: Jensen Huang (62) – Nvidia, Parallel computing.
• No. 6: Sam Altman (40) – OpenAI.
• No. 7: Phil Knight (87) – Nike.
• No. 8: Martine Rothblatt (71) – SiriusXM, United Therapeutics.
• No. 9: Ted Turner (87) – CNN, TBS, TCM.
• No. 10: Vinod Khosla (70) – Sun Microsystems, Venture Capital.
• No. 11: Larry Page (52) – Google.
• No. 12: Sergey Brin (52) – Google/Alphabet.
• No. 13: Reed Hastings (65) – Netflix.
• No. 14: Marc Andreessen (54) – Netscape, Andreessen Horowitz.
• No. 15: Larry Ellison (81) – Oracle.
• No. 16: Judy Faulkner (82) – Epic Systems.
• No. 17: Jim Sinegal (90) – Costco.
• No. 18: Michael Bloomberg (83) – Bloomberg LP.
• No. 19: Michael Milken (79) – High-yield bonds.
• No. 20: Diane Greene (70) – Virtualization/Cloud (VMware).
• No. 21: Andrew Viterbi (90) – Qualcomm.
• No. 22: Brian Chesky (44) – Airbnb.
• No. 23: Judy Estrin (71) – Internet networking.
• No. 24: Thomas Peterffy (81) – Interactive Brokers.
• No. 25: Fred Moll (73) – Robotic surgery.
• No. 26: Henry Samueli (71) – Broadcom.
• No. 27: Bob Metcalfe (79) – Ethernet/3Com.
• No. 28: Marc Benioff (61) – Salesforce.
• No. 29: Steven Spielberg (79) – DreamWorks, Filmmaking.
• No. 30: Howard Schultz (72) – Starbucks.
• No. 31: Henry Kravis (82) – KKR.
• No. 32: Noubar Afeyan (63) – Flagship Pioneering, Moderna.
• No. 33: Palmer Luckey (33) – Oculus, Anduril.
• No. 34: Harry Stine (84) – Stine Seed.
• No. 35: Warren Buffett (95) – Value Investing.
• No. 36: Rupert Murdoch (94) – News Corp/Fox.
• No. 37: Mark Zuckerberg (41) – Meta (Facebook).
• No. 38: George Roberts (82) – KKR.
• No. 39: Robert Langer (77) – Biotech/Moderna.
• No. 40: Ken Griffin (57) – Citadel.
• No. 41: Leroy Hood (87) – DNA sequencing.
• No. 42: Charles Schwab (88) – Retail Investing.
• No. 43: Ed Catmull (80) – Pixar.
• No. 44: Rodney Brooks (71) – Roomba/Robotics.
• No. 45: Carl June (72) – Cancer immunotherapy.
• No. 46: Rich Fairbank (75) – Capital One.
• No. 47: Jim Clark (81) – Netscape, Silicon Graphics.
• No. 48: Phillip Sharp (81) – Biogen.
• No. 49: Peter Thiel (58) – PayPal, Palantir, Founders Fund.
• No. 50: Steve Wozniak (75) – Apple.