The recently released list by Forbes, featuring America’s Richest Immigrants 2025, mentions billionaire Steven Udvar-Hazy, saying, “When you come to America, you meet with a completely different value system than the people that are born here.”
Steven Udvar-Hazy is one of those who immigrated to the United States from Hungary as a child, packed boxes in a Manhattan warehouse for 30 cents an hour at age 14 and went on to create the aeroplane leasing industry. He is one of the record 125 foreign-born American citizens on Forbes’ billionaires list who currently live in the United States, up by more than a third from our last tally of 92 in 2022.
Forbes said, “These American immigrants are worth a record $1.3 trillion combined and hold 18% of America’s $7.2 trillion in total billionaire wealth.” Forbes defined immigrant billionaires as foreign-born American citizens currently living in the United States with an estimated net worth of more than $1 billion as of July 7, 2025.
As per Forbes, three of the 10 richest people in America (and the world) are immigrants, including the world’s wealthiest person, Elon Musk. Musk was born in South Africa and came to the U.S. via Canada as a college student and is now worth an estimated $393.1 billion.
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, is the second richest immigrant, with an estimated $139.7 billion fortune. Brin’s family moved to the U.S. from Russia when he was 6 years old to escape the anti-Semitism they faced in their home country. America’s 3rd richest immigrant, Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, was born in Taiwan and moved to Thailand as a child with his family.
This year, India also added the second most immigrant billionaires to Forbes’ list (5) and overtook Israel as the birthplace of the most billionaire immigrants (12). Israel and Taiwan each have 11 billionaires. In 2022, India had 7 billionaires, while Israel had 10. That year, Asian giant Taiwan had 4 people on Forbes’ foreign-born richest persons list, according to the list.
Meet The Overall Richest Americans
- Elon Musk: Musk cofounded seven companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI. He owns about 12% of Tesla, excluding options, but has pledged more than half his shares as collateral for personal loans of up to $3.5 billion. He bought Twitter in a $44 billion (enterprise value) deal in 2022. Forbes estimates that the social media company, which he renamed X, is worth nearly 70% less as of August 2024.
- Sergey Brin: Brin stepped down as president of Alphabet, parent company of Google, in December 2019 but remains a board member and a controlling shareholder. Brin moved to the U.S. from Russia when he was 6 years old in the wake of anti-Semitism against his family. His net worth is $139.7B.
- Jensen Huang: Jensen cofounded graphics-chip maker Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its CEO and president ever since. Huang owns approximately 3% of Nvidia, which he took public in 1999. Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to Thailand as a child, but his family sent him and his brother to the U.S as civil unrest mounted in the Asian nation. He has $137.9B.
- Thomas Peterffy: Thomas, a digital trading pioneer, chairs Interactive Brokers, which markets its specialised trading platform to sophisticated investors. He founded Interactive Brokers in 1993 after originally starting in market-making, and was CEO until December 2019. He is the 4th richest American with a net worth of $68.6B.
- Jay Chaudhry: Chaudhry is CEO of Zscaler, a cybersecurity firm he founded in 2008. It went public in March 2018. Before Zscaler, Chaudhry founded four other tech companies that were all acquired: SecureIT, CoreHarbor, CipherTrust and AirDefense. His hometown, a village in the Himalayas in India, did not have electricity or running water until he was in the 8th and 10th grades, respectively. Chaudhry moved to the U.S. in 1980 to attend graduate school and now lives in Nevada, after relocating from the Bay Area.
- John Tu: John runs Kingston Technology, which makes storage and memory products, from a cubicle on the sales floor. Tu, a Chinese native who grew up in Taiwan, got an engineering degree in Germany and then immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. In 2020, he invested $50 million in Fluxergy, a medical tech startup that developed a rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19.
ALSO READ: India Surpasses Israel In Forbes’ Billionaire List: Meet The Richest Indian-Origin Americans
