Billionaire Gautam Adani reclaims India's richest title from Mukesh Ambani

Gautam Adani is India's richest person again. Forbes' 2026 list of the country's 100 wealthiest, published Wednesday, puts the Adani Group chairman's family fortune at $112.7 billion, ahead of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani at $86.3 billion.

It is the first time Adani has topped the Forbes India list since 2022. In January 2023, a report by short-seller Hindenburg Research wiped more than $100 billion off his group's market value, and Ambani held the No. 1 spot for the next three annual lists.

The swing this year ran in opposite directions. Adani added $20.7 billion, the largest gain of anyone on the list. Ambani lost $18.7 billion, which Forbes attributed to margin pressure at Reliance, including in its retail business, that weighed on the shares.

Both results came in a bad year for Indian assets. The benchmark index fell 9.5% and the rupee lost 8.5% against the dollar, yet the combined wealth of the top 100 stayed at about $1 trillion.

Adani's recovery has two parts. The business kept growing, across ports, airports, power and cement, and the group has announced a $100 billion push into artificial intelligence infrastructure. The legal overhang also cleared: a $275 million U.S. Treasury sanctions settlement in May, the Justice Department dropping its charges, and this week a settlement with India's market regulator that closed a six-year investigation into the group's shareholding. The family fortune is still below its 2022 peak of $150 billion.

Other rich lists agree. Hurun's India ranking, published Sept. 23, also moved Adani above Ambani, with the Adani family up 13% and the Ambani family down 10%. Bloomberg's daily index, which uses a different method and values Adani at about $109 billion, has had him ahead of Ambani for much of 2026; on that index he was briefly Asia's richest person until ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming overtook him in mid-September.

Ambani has a catalyst waiting. Jio Platforms, Reliance's mobile operator, has regulatory approval for an initial public offering that could raise up to $3.8 billion, which would be India's largest ever. Reliance has also raised about $2.3 billion in rupee bonds in the past three weeks.

Further down the list, Savitri Jindal held third at $39.8 billion, and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal was the biggest percentage gainer, up 74% to $34.7 billion and eight places to fourth. Four names joined: Krishna Chivukula after listing Indo-MIM in July; brothers Kushal and Chaitanya Desai at No. 69 with $4.25 billion as cable maker Apar Industries nearly doubled; Aditya Khemka at No. 83 with $3.6 billion; and the three Virani brothers behind Balaji Wafers, after selling a stake to General Atlantic.

The software founders went backward. Shiv Nadar, Azim Premji and N.R. Narayana Murthy all lost ground.

The top spot is not settled. Adani's lead depends on a group still rebuilding trust and now wagering $100 billion on AI; Ambani's comeback depends on a Jio listing that could reprice Reliance in a day.