Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, is the richest person living in the United Arab Emirates as of November 2026, with a fortune we estimate at about $115 billion. That is more than the other nine people on this list put together. Our ranking covers individuals and family fortunes based in the UAE, Emirati citizens and foreign residents alike, measured by personal wealth.
The UAE has become a magnet for founders who can live anywhere: no personal income tax, direct flights to almost everywhere and a government that courts billionaires openly. That shows in the list below, where six of the ten names moved to the Emirates as adults.
| Rank | Name | Net worth (USD) | Main source of wealth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Abdulla bin Ahmad Al Ghurair & family | $4.4 billion | Mashreq bank, Al Ghurair group |
| 9 | M.A. Yusuff Ali | $4.9 billion | Lulu hypermarkets |
| 8 | Abdulla Al Futtaim & family | $5 billion | Al-Futtaim Group (car dealerships, retail, property) |
| 7 | Renuka Jagtiani | $6 billion | Retail chains (Max, Babyshop, Home Centre) |
| 6 | Pavel Durov | $8.3 billion | Telegram |
| 5 | Hussain Sajwani | $10.6 billion | Damac Properties |
| 4 | Andrey Melnichenko & family | $20 billion | EuroChem fertilizer, SUEK coal |
| 3 | Vinod Adani | $27 billion | Stakes in Adani Group companies |
| 2 | Nik Storonsky | $28.4 billion | Revolut |
| 1 | Changpeng Zhao | $115 billion | Binance |
The 10 richest people in the UAE, ranked
10. Abdulla bin Ahmad Al Ghurair & family: $4.4 billion
The Al Ghurair name is older than the UAE itself. Abdulla bin Ahmad Al Ghurair founded Mashreq in 1967, four years before the federation formed, and it grew into one of the country’s oldest and best-known private banks.
The family’s holdings stretch well past finance, into food processing, construction materials and real estate across Dubai. The family keeps a low profile, and most of the wealth sits in private companies rather than on any stock market screen.
We value the family’s Mashreq shares at market prices and add a conservative estimate for the private Al Ghurair businesses, which have no public valuation. We then deduct the third of the group that belongs to the family’s charitable foundation.
9. M.A. Yusuff Ali: $4.9 billion
Yusuff Ali landed in Abu Dhabi from Kerala in 1973 to join his uncle’s small trading business. He turned it into Lulu, a chain of hypermarkets that now has roughly 250 stores across the Gulf, India and parts of Asia, and that feeds a large slice of the UAE’s expat population every week.
The big moment came in November 2024, when Lulu Retail listed on the Abu Dhabi stock exchange in the country’s largest IPO that year, raising about $1.7 billion. Ali kept a controlling stake and still runs the group, along with hotels and shopping malls owned separately.
His Lulu Retail shares at current prices and his cash from the IPO make up more than half of this figure, with malls, hotels and other interests added at a cautious estimate.
8. Abdulla Al Futtaim & family: $5 billion
If you have bought a Toyota in Dubai, shopped at the local IKEA or walked through Dubai Festival City, you have probably paid the Al Futtaims. Their group holds the UAE franchise for Toyota and Lexus, runs IKEA stores in the region and owns a large property portfolio.
The business started as a trading house in the 1930s and grew with the oil money that rebuilt Dubai. Abdulla Al Futtaim is the patriarch, and his son Omar now runs much of the day-to-day operation.
Because the group is private, our figure leans on the size of its dealerships and malls and on what similar regional retailers and distributors are worth.
7. Renuka Jagtiani: $6 billion
The Jagtiani family retail group began in 1973 as a single baby products shop in Bahrain. Today it runs well over 2,000 stores across the Middle East and India under names such as Max, Babyshop, Home Centre, Centrepoint and Splash, and Dubai is its headquarters.
Renuka Jagtiani chairs the group, which is one of the largest retailers in the Gulf. She is one of the richest women in the Middle East.
The group has no listed shares, so we model its retail chains against regional peers and assign the family’s controlling stake to her.
6. Pavel Durov: $8.3 billion
Durov built VKontakte, the Russian answer to Facebook, in his twenties, then founded the messaging app Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. Telegram now has around a billion monthly users and runs from Dubai, where Durov has been based for years.
He owns Telegram outright, which makes valuing it tricky. The app makes money through premium subscriptions, ads and a crypto ecosystem built around the TON blockchain, and it has sold billions of dollars in bonds to investors.
The number values Telegram at a multiple of its reported revenue, less the bonds it has issued and a discount for being private, plus his crypto holdings.
5. Hussain Sajwani: $10.6 billion
Sajwani is the richest Emirati citizen on this list and the man behind many of Dubai’s flashiest towers. He started in catering, feeding US military bases and engineering crews, and moved into real estate after Dubai opened property ownership to foreigners, founding Damac in 2002.
His marketing is as loud as his buildings. Damac has given away Lamborghinis to apartment buyers and signed co-branded projects with Versace and Bugatti. The company was taken private by Sajwani in 2022 and has been on a building spree since Dubai property prices took off after the pandemic.
We value Damac against the sales multiple of a listed Dubai developer, then add his data center, hotel and other interests at cautious estimates.
4. Andrey Melnichenko & family: $20 billion
Melnichenko co-founded MDM Bank in 1993 while still a university student, then moved into industry. He founded EuroChem, one of the world’s largest fertilizer producers, and SUEK, a major coal company, and together they employ more than 100,000 people.
He holds UAE citizenship and lists Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost emirate, as his home, and the family’s industrial stakes sit inside a family trust. Fertilizer prices drive his fortune more than anything, so it swings with global food and energy markets.
Our estimate values the trust’s stakes in EuroChem and SUEK on industry peer multiples. Because the companies are private and their numbers are hard to check, we treat this figure as an estimate with a wide margin.
3. Vinod Adani: $27 billion
Vinod Adani is the older brother of Indian industrialist Gautam Adani, and he has lived in Dubai for decades, trading commodities and investing through overseas holding companies. He is one of the least photographed billionaires on earth.
His wealth comes from stakes in Adani Group companies held through those investment firms, including Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, Adani Power and Ambuja Cements. His firms helped fund the group’s $10.5 billion purchase of Holcim’s Indian cement business in 2022, which turned the Adanis into India’s second-largest cement maker.
We value his holdings at market prices of the listed Adani companies, which makes this one of the more volatile numbers on the list.
2. Nik Storonsky: $28.4 billion
Storonsky traded derivatives at Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse before co-founding Revolut in 2015 to fix what annoyed him about foreign currency fees. The app grew into a full digital bank with more than 65 million customers and about $4 billion in revenue in 2024.
A share sale in July 2026 reportedly valued Revolut at about $115 billion, making it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies. Storonsky moved from London to Dubai in 2025, which is why he appears here.
His stake of about 29% at that valuation drives this figure, and we cut it by 15% because the shares are private and hard to sell.
1. Changpeng Zhao: $115 billion
Zhao, known to everyone in crypto as CZ, was born in Jiangsu, grew up in Canada and started out writing high-frequency trading software. He founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the world’s largest crypto exchange within months.
He stepped down as CEO in 2023 but still owns an estimated 90% of the company, plus a large holding of BNB, the token tied to Binance. He lives in the UAE, which also became the closest thing Binance had to a home base.
His Binance stake, valued on exchange trading volumes and revenue, plus his BNB tokens at November 2026 prices, gives us the figure. Crypto prices can move this number by tens of billions in a month, so read it as a snapshot.
Special mentions
- The Al Nahyan family: Abu Dhabi’s ruling family is often called the richest family in the world, with estimates above $300 billion, but its private fortune is tangled with state and sovereign wealth funds, so we leave it out of a ranking of personal wealth.
- The Al Maktoum family: Dubai’s ruling family owns vast property, horse racing interests and stakes in Dubai companies, yet the line between family money and state assets is too blurry to value.
- Ravi Pillai and Sunny Varkey: the construction and education billionaires have deep UAE roots, but we could not confirm a recent figure for either above the $4.4 billion cutoff for this list.
What the UAE’s richest have in common
Four of the top five made their money somewhere else and then moved to the Emirates. Zhao, Storonsky, Melnichenko and Adani are a new kind of UAE billionaire, the relocator, and their arrival has pushed homegrown names such as the Al Ghurairs and Al Futtaims down the table. The older Emirati fortunes are built on trade licenses and franchises, the right to sell Toyotas or run a bank, while the newcomers’ money comes from apps, exchanges and global industry.
The other pattern is retail. Lulu and the Jagtiani stores were both founded by Indian migrants in the 1970s, selling groceries and baby clothes to other migrants. Fifty years later they are two of the biggest store chains in the Gulf, which says a lot about who actually built the UAE’s consumer economy.
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Who is the richest person in the UAE?
Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, is the richest person living in the UAE, with an estimated fortune of about $115 billion as of November 2026.
Who is the richest Emirati citizen?
Hussain Sajwani, founder of Damac Properties, is the richest Emirati citizen on our list at about $10.6 billion, ignoring the ruling families, whose wealth cannot be separated from the state.
How much money does it take to make the UAE top 10?
About $4.4 billion. That is the estimated fortune of the Al Ghurair family, who hold the 10th spot.
Why do so many billionaires live in Dubai?
The UAE charges no personal income tax, offers long-term golden visas to investors and has strong air links to Europe, Asia and Africa, which makes it an easy base for founders with global businesses.
Who is the richest woman in the UAE?
Renuka Jagtiani, chair of the Dubai retail group behind Max and Home Centre, is the richest woman on our list with an estimated $6 billion.
Is the UAE royal family richer than Changpeng Zhao?
As a family, yes. Estimates for the Al Nahyan family run above $300 billion, but that wealth is spread across many members and mixed with state assets, so we rank individuals and private family fortunes instead.
How we estimate net worth
Our estimates are based on public reporting, company valuations, and deal and earnings figures all compiled in an internal valuation model. They are approximate, and figures change over time as new information emerges.
Keep reading
- Places where it’s easiest to get rich
- How family offices manage billionaire money
- How cities get rich
Last updated: November 2026.
