Forbes' richest Americans: Jeff Bezos on top, Bill Gates follows

On October 2, Forbes released its 38th annual list of the top 400 wealthiest Americans. Amazon's founder and CEO retained the top spot from last year and was followed by Bill Gates on the second. The list featured some notable names as the founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, Ralph Lauren, Howard Schultz, and Oprah Winfrey. The combined net worth of these wealthiest Americans is estimated to be around a whopping $2.96 trillion. 

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The top 5 out of 400

Amazon Ceo Jeff Bezos held on to the top spot with a net worth of $114 billion which is less than his last year's net worth of $160 billion following a high-profile divorce with wife MacKenzie Bezos, who received 25% of the couple's Amazon share and also featured on the top 400 at number 15 with a net worth of a $36.1 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates grabbed the second spot this year, with a net worth of $106 billion after having donated $35.8 billion to charity so far. Forbes has also ranked the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the world's biggest private charitable foundation.  Warren Buffet along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison followed Bezos and Gates to be ranked as the third, fourth and fifth respectively. 

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Jay-Z and Kylie Jenner miss out from the list

29-year-old Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, Inc. became the youngest person to be featured in the list whereas 96-year-old media magnate Sumner Redstone was the oldest one. 19 new people made it to the list, including Anthony Wood, the founder of the streaming technology Roku, and the first Puerto Rican-born billionaire Orlando Bravo. The list which has a minimum net worth requirement of $2.1 billion, discarded around 221 American billionaires from being featured which included celebrities like Jay-Z and Kylie Jenner. 

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