On July 15, Forbes published its 2026 ranking of the richest immigrants in the United States, with a record of 144 foreign-born billionaires and a combined fortune of $2.2 trillion, compared to 125 members last year. Eight of them were born in Latin America and the Caribbean. Here we review who they are and how they built their fortunes.

Before going to the community representatives, Elon Musk leads the Forbes list of the richest immigrants in the US, with an estimated net worth of $927 billion. During this year, the businessman managed to overcome the $1 billion dollar barrier, becoming the first billionaire on June 12, the day SpaceX went public. The billionaire also owns Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), xAI, The Boring Company and Neuralink.

Musk is followed by the Russian Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Jensen Huang, CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, born in Taiwan. The three also dominate the general ranking of billionaires that Forbes published in March and concentrate more than 60% of the total wealth of billionaire immigrants in the United States.

This year's Forbes list set a new record with 144 immigrant billionaires, up from 125 personalities last year, and a combined fortune estimated at $2.2 trillion.

For the second year in a row, India is the birthplace of the largest number of immigrant billionaires, with a record 19.

Meanwhile, speaking specifically of Latin American billionaires, there are only eight Latin Americans who are part of the three comma club, from which the Guatemalan Luis von Ahn, co-founder of Duolingo, left after a drop in the company's shares. Among this year's Latin billionaires there are two Mexicans, two Argentines, one Venezuelan, one Bolivian, one Panamanian and one Haitian.

1. Abel Avellan, Venezuela (position 41)

2. Pablo Legorreta, Mexico (position 50)

With an estimated net worth of $5 billion dollars, Pablo Legorreta is the second Latin American and the first Mexican to appear in the Forbes ranking. Legorreta is the founder of Royalty Pharma, the world's largest company in the acquisition of pharmaceutical royalty streams. The company invests in drugs with high potential and acquires the right to receive a percentage of future sales of the drugs it financed.

3. Jorge Pérez, Argentina (position 83)

Argentine businessman Jorge Pérez's main source of income comes from investments in real estate. He runs Related Group, a Miami-based real estate developer that claims to have built more than 100,000 condos and apartments since its founding in 1979. He is worth around $2.6 billion.

4. Daniel Lubetzky, Mexico (position 91)

Daniel Lubetzky was born in Mexico City in 1968 and is the founder and CEO of Kind Healthy Snacks, an energy bar company. Although in 2020 he sold most of the company to Mars for $5 billion, Lubetzky maintains a stake that has generated an estimated wealth of $2.3 billion.

5. Herriot Tabuteau, Haiti (94th position)

Herriot Tabuteau founded Axsome Therapeutics in 2012 with the goal of developing life-changing treatments for the millions of patients living with brain disorders. He is the inventor of more than 200 patents, including potential new medications for depression, behavioral disorders in Alzheimer's disease, and narcolepsy. Tabuteau has $2.2 billion dollars.

6. Marcelo Claure, Bolivia (position 97)

Marcelo Claure is a Bolivian-American businessman with an estimated wealth of $2.1 billion dollars. He served as chief operating officer of the Japanese company SoftBank, the same company that acquired Brightstar in 2014, Claure's company. Currently, much of his fortune is now invested in shares of T-Mobile, which merged with Sprint in 2020, and where he is part of the board of directors. It also owns stakes in fast fashion giant SHEIN.

7. Guillermo Rauch, Argentina (position 97)

Sharing the 97th place with the Bolivian Claure, Guillermo Rauch also has a net worth of $2.1 billion dollars. He was co-founder of Vercel, a company that creates developer tools for website hosting and deployment. This company achieved a valuation of $9 billion, after it raised $300 million, in a funding round co-led by venture capital firm Accel and GIC, in September 2025. Currently, Vercel is the infrastructure provider for some of the world's biggest brands, such as Under Armour, Stripe and Sonos.

8. Albert Nahmad, Panama (position 129)

Albert Nahmad closes the group with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. Born in Panama, he emigrated to the United States to study engineering at the University of New Mexico and later at Purdue. In 1973 he bought a stake in Watsco, then a small publicly traded company, and through acquisitions turned it into the largest distributor of air conditioning, heating and refrigeration equipment in North America: capitalization went from $22 million in 1989 to more than $20 billion today, according to Forbes. Nahmad owns about 7% of the company, which he has run for more than five decades, and his son is Watsco's chairman.

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