Billionaires are obviously an exclusive lot, but they are growing in number, according to a new global report. The Altrata Billionaire Census 2025 —the leading global survey on billionaires—found membership among the world’s wealthiest individuals grew to 3,508 in late 2024, an increase of nearly 6 per cent over the previous year.
The survey and Altrata’s companion offering, the World Ultra Wealth Report 2025, “are necessary reading for many of Canada’s leading ultra-high-net-wealth advisors and family offices,” says Thane Stenner, founder of Stenner Wealth Partners+ at CG Wealth Management and Chairman Emeritus of ultra-high-net worth (UHNW) network Tiger 21 in Canada.
Stenner works with some of Canada’s wealthiest families and entrepreneurs. He previously held award-winning consulting roles at Morgan Stanley/Graystone Consulting, based in California as Managing Director, International Client Advisor, Institutional Consulting Director, Alternative Investments Director and Portfolio Manager. He also hosts “Smart WealthTM with Thane Stenner,”—a podcast produced by BNN Bloomberg Brand Studio.
“The report provides a dossier of publicly available information on this exclusive group, offering insights not only on billionaires but ultra-high-net worth clients in general,” he says.
Among the billionaire report insights are that this group’s wealth grew by more than 10 per cent in 2024 to a record US$13.4 trillion. This handful of individuals accounts for about 25 per cent to the total US$103.2 trillion of wealth held among individuals with at least $5 million in assets globally. The United States is home to the largest share of global billionaires with the report citing 1,135 lived in the U.S. in 2024, up 8 per cent from the year previous.
Canada’s billionaires
Canada ranked 12th among the 14 top nations in the survey with 63 billionaires, an increase of about one billionaire from the previous year.
That said, Stenner believes Canada has more billionaires than the survey indicates. “Canadian billionaires represent about one tenth of the U.S. market,” he says, noting a rule of thumb that often is applied when comparing wealth data between Canada and the U.S. He estimates Canada likely has closer to 100 billionaires.
He adds that many are “stealth billionaires”, who do not want to show up on any lists because they are very private and humble.
Indeed, Stenner works with a few of those “stealth” billionaires helping them stay members of the ‘three comma club.’ That is a reference to the three commas in the numerical expression for one billion, a term made popular during the wild growth in Silicon Valley during the 1990s.
Wealthy people want to be wealthy once, not twice.
Stenner
Stenner has worked previously in the tech/Bay Area for more than 20 years, helping newly minted tech barons invest for the long-term. Yet permanent membership in the ‘three comma club’ members is by no means guaranteed as the Altrata report illustrates.
It found nearly 8 per cent of billionaires with assets between $1 billion and $2 billion at the start of 2024 lost their status by year’s end.
The report also notes that individuals with $4.2 billion or more have a 99 per cent likelihood of remaining billionaires.
Wealth concentration
What’s more, those whose wealth was concentrated in a publicly owned company were more likely to drop out of the three-comma club than those owning private businesses, the report cites. Last year’s drop-out numbers were less than in 2022 when more than 20 per cent fell below the billion-dollar-wealth threshold during the 2022 bear market.
What’s notable about the data, particularly with respect to 2022, is how it illustrates the volatility risk associated with the nature of how they hold their wealth, especially among the newly minted billionaires, Stenner says.
“Billionaires often become billionaires by concentrating their wealth and their efforts on one or two businesses, but at the end of the day, it’s the diversification that protects and keeps it over time,” Stenner says.
Many ultra-high-net-worth families—with $30 million or more in assets—have grown their wealth as a result of a dramatic rise in value of a business, he adds.
Wealth advisors/consultants
The challenge for wealth advisors, including those working in family offices, is convincing individuals to diversify across different asset classes to preserve wealth. It can be a tough sell, based on Stenner’s experience.
He can point to a number of instances in his career working with clients who have made hundreds of millions of dollars or more from selling a private business or taking it public. “When companies go public, typically there’s a four-month lock-up period, where insiders can’t sell for typically four to six months,” he cites as one example.
“And there are advanced strategies that wealth advisors can do for clients during that time to partially hedge an expected wealth position no matter what the stock does after going public,” he says.
Stenner adds ultra-high-net-worth families can leverage a handful of tax-efficient strategies to diversify their exposures to mitigate concentration risk. Yet, it’s more than tax planning that’s required for individuals facing once-in-a-lifetime windfalls on liquidity events.
A previous article noted that individuals often need intangible skills along with governance structures to deal with the emotional weight and increased complexities that often accompanies managing newly-acquired substantial wealth—be it tens of millions or billions of dollars. It’s a growing need, given the ultra-high-net worth demographic is growing too, as the other Altrata study shows.
Individuals with at least $30 million grew to an estimated 510,810 globally in 2024, an increase of more than 5 per cent year over year. More than 40 per cent reside in North America with about 15,620 living in Canada, with about US$1.7 trillion in total assets. Altrata’s report cites that the ultra-wealthy population has grown seven times faster than the global adult population over the last two decades.
What’s next?
Stenner notes that investments in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies have fuelled growth, but these thematic investments encompass significant risks. History has a habit of repeating itself when those risks are ignored.
“I saw individuals in the dot-com era owning multi-million-dollar stakes in companies they thought would make them billionaires, only to see values go to zero,” he adds.
His point for clients today is to be “shrewd investors that understand when markets are frothy, taking chips off the table is super important.” Yet shifting from strategies that have served wealthy individuals so well to more diversified ones, often requiring investing in underperforming/undervalued assets, can be challenging.
“Especially for those who made their wealth recently in these high-flying sectors, the tendency is to extrapolate those returns to the moon,” he says. Yet “rapid wealth creation can easily be followed by rapid deterioration/destruction.”
Even “old money” can struggle to shift investment philosophy. Many Canadian families built fortunes in real estate, benefiting from the 40-year tailwind of falling rates until the paradigm shifted dramatically amid high inflation and rising rates in 2022 and 2023, as well as Covid prior to 2020.
One problem old and new money faces is diversifying assets tax-efficiently
Stenner notes a few strategies to do that, including taking private real estate portfolios public as listed REITs (real estate investment trusts), allowing owners to use a provision to diversify and generate cash flows on a tax-deferred basis.
What’s important—be it for ‘three comma club’ members or the more plentiful ultra-high-net worth individuals—is to access suitable, holistic advice ensuring the wealth they made is preserved for the long run.
“It’s not about continual growth,” Stenner says, noting entrepreneurial clients often are geared toward high-risk/high-reward strategies.
“If through a combination of hard work and luck, you reach billionaire or even ultra-high-net-worth status, protecting that capital should be the first and foremost issue on your mind.”
*Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. Mr. Stenner’s viewpoints within this interview were submitted to CFO in mid-November 2025.
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Thane Stenner Interviews/Articles, Member of Canadian Family Offices.
About Stenner Wealth Partners+
Stenner Wealth Partners+ (SWP+) is an in person/virtual Multi-Family Office/Outsourced CIO Consulting team of financial/wealth specialists with a boutique approach and global perspective. SWP+ serves Canadian and US investors/households with generally a minimum of 10M+ in investable assets or 25M+ net worth. As a CG Wealth Management team, SWP+ is a highly exclusive practice team with one of Canada’s largest independent wealth management firms. Client Range of Net Worths: between $25M To $3B+. They strategically limit new client engagements, onboarding only six to eight new key relationships annually to ensure a highly personalized and focused approach. SWP+ is a member of Canadian Family Offices.
About CG Wealth Management
The global wealth management business is entrusted with C$133.6 billion in client assets1. The wealth management operations of the Canaccord Genuity Group (CG Wealth Management) provide comprehensive wealth management solutions and brokerage services to individual investors, private clients, family offices, Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), and intermediaries through a full suite of services tailored to the needs of each client.
1Canaccord Genuity Annual Report, September 30, 2025
Disclaimer: This story was created by Canadian Family Offices’ commercial content division on behalf of Stenner Wealth Partners+ at CG Wealth Management, which is a member and content provider of this publication. CG Wealth Management is a division of Canaccord Genuity Corp., member of CIPF and CIRO. Tax & Estate advice offered through Canaccord Genuity Wealth & Estate Planning Services Ltd. Thane Stenner’s views, including any recommendations, expressed in this article are his own only, and are not necessarily those of Canaccord Genuity Corp.