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The world’s richest people see their wealth increase more than ever before by 2025, but a funny thing happened along the way. Many of them seem to have decided that their best prospects for the future are not on the western side of the Atlantic, although the extraordinary performance of the US equity market has driven many of these gains. A growing segment of the ultra-elites are quietly voting with their feet against the idea that the American Dream is even worth pursuing in America.
The 500 richest people on the planet added a record $2.2 trillion to their wealth this year, Bloomberg’s Dylan Sloan reportswhich has increased their combined net worth to about $11.9 trillion. Big Tech is leading the charge, with excitement over the prospects of artificial intelligence growing so large that the Magnificent Seven has been broken by several shares from the other 493 companies in the S&P 500.
The year also saw an influx of what UBS Global Wealth Management calls “everyday millionaire,” or the millionaire next door with a fortune in the low seven figures. At the dawn of the millennium, there were more than 13 million of these people worldwide, but that number has “increased” to nearly 52 million by the end of 2024—a more than fourfold increase. New York Times bestselling author Nick Maggiulli, the COO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, SPOKE luck in August that “something strange is happening” in wealth trends, because many rich Americans are rich in property but feel poor, with six new economic classes being formed and no one seems too happy about it.
Another look at the UBS wealth analysis, the latest Billionaire Ambition Reportoffers a partial explanation. The total wealth of the world’s billionaires rose to a peak of nearly $15.8 trillion in 2025, driven by self-promotion and the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in the report’s history. $297.8 billion this year alone.
Sure, North America remains the top investment destination for billionaires surveyed by UBS, but the proportion of the ultra-rich who believe it offers the greatest opportunity for returns has fallen from 80% to 63% year-on-year. And where North America is sinking, other destinations are rising, with four in 10 billionaires rating Western Europe as the biggest area for opportunity in the next 12 months.
If success means abandonment
Some high-profile anecdotes show ultrarich Americans voting with their feet. Although the US remains the top investment destination for billionaires’ capital, many of the people who “made it” are increasingly deciding that they don’t want to live their success within America’s borders.
The same forces that inflate asset prices—hyper-financialization, permanent online visibility and polarized politics—are pushing some high-earners to seek safety, anonymity, and a slower pace of life abroad. France’s decision this month to grant citizenship to George Clooneyhis wife, Amal, and their twins, showed great stress.
The two-time Oscar winner, a longtime Hollywood fixture, has effectively moved his family’s center of gravity to a former wine estate in Provence that he describes as a farm, making the hills of southern France his home base instead of Los Angeles. And she’s been unusually candid about why she no longer wants to raise her children in Los Angeles, SPEAKING Esquire recently that he fears they will “never … get a fair shake in life” in Hollywood culture. France, on the other hand, can offer its children a “better life” centered on work, family, and relatives that are less obvious than red carpets and paparazzi.
By choosing a jurisdiction with strict privacy laws and stricter limits on taking pictures of children, Clooney is effectively settling legal regimes the way multinational corporations arbitrage tax codes – only here the protected property is family life, not corporate profits. His move is a personal hedge against US celebrity culture and, more broadly, a critique of an American Dream that offers visibility as a reward but often delivers surveillance as a cost.
A wider elite exit
Clooney is far from alone among the famous and rich re-examining their ties to the United States. Recent years have seen Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi decamp in the UK after Trump’s reelection, Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland, and figures like Richard Gere, Tom Ford, and the former. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is moving homes or main base to Europe.
Behind the headlines, the data points to a broader, less visible wave of departures. The IRS “Expatriation List,” which tracks most of the high-net-worth individuals who renounced US citizenship, recorded almost 4,820 rejections in 2024-up about 48% from 2023 and the third highest annual total on record, with about 21,000 high-net-renouncing alone between 202 Americans. The only years with higher prominent expat departures are 2016 and 2020, for obvious reasons – Trump’s first election and the start of the COVID pandemic.
A broken dream at the top
UBS found that billionaire families have become increasingly mobile and international, with more than a third saying they have moved at least once and the same share considering moves, citing a better quality of life, geopolitical concerns, and tax planning. “This means they now face an unprecedented set of challenges that span continents, generations, and cultures.”
That move highlights a paradox: North America remains the preferred destination for capital, but for some people who own it, the “dream” increasingly requires an offshore upgrade to protect their children and their peace of mind.
Another aspect of the UBS report suggests that the tensions that push some people to leave are the same thing that created so much wealth in the first place. The US created so much wealth in 2025 that it created 92 new self-made billionaires, leading the world as $179.9 billion in wealth was created from America’s innovation boom. Asia-Pacific saw 61 people become billionaires, representing $124.4 billion, and Europe came in last place, with 43 new billionaires and $82.2 billion in wealth.
And in terms of long-term investment destinations, the billionaires surveyed by UBS found that North America is still the best place for them to generate a return, with 65% seeing it as the top place, almost unchanged from the search for 2024 of 68%. This suggests that only one region can change enough to see the most wealth created the fastest, as noted Irish economic podcaster David McWilliams. luck in November.
“This innovative spirit is rooted in American history,” McWilliams said, going back to Alexander Hamilton, as discussed in his 2025 book, The History of Money. In Europe, he said, “the whole idea is that you mitigate risk all the time, right? You go to public health, you go to public schools, you get a job, you don’t get fired, all kinds of things.” The danger, on the other hand, is “the defining psychological state of the American.” The American Dream, in other words, is alive and well, if you look at how much wealth has been generated within the engine of risk and innovation. It just comes with a lot of risk.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
