Top 10 Richest People In Canada (2024)

Top 10 Richest People In Canada (2024)

Canada is one of the countries in the world known for economic and political stability. The country has produced a total of 67 billionaires, making it the eighth country with the highest billionaires in the world. In this article, we compiled a list of the top 10 richest people in Canada.

While the majority of today’s billionaires are younger than those of the past, several heritage family institutions still control a significant portion of the nation’s wealth. But who are these billionaire family empires, exactly? The 10 richest men listed below are important to remember.

Key Details

• David Thomson is the richest man in Canada.
• Changpeng Zhao is the richest crypto billionaire in Canada
• There are over 50 Billionaires in Canada

Top 10 Richest People In Canada

The table below contains the names and net worth of the top 10 richest people in Canada in 2024.

1. David Thomson

With an estimated net worth of $67 billion, David Thomson is the richest man in Canada in 2024. He became the chairman of Thomson Corporation and also inherited his father’s British title, Baron Thomson of Fleet. David Thomson is first on our list of the top 10 richest people in Canada.

Thomson started his business career as a junior associate at McLeod Young Weir in Toronto. He left the firm to enter the family business, working in several positions in companies controlled by the Thomson family.

Trying to develop a business outside the family fortune he founded Osmington Incorporated, a real estate firm that acquires and manages commercial real estate assets on behalf of institutional shareholders. Thomson is also the chairman of the Globe and Mail newspaper,  Woodbridge, and Thomson Reuters.

2. Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao is the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and the second richest man in Canada in 2024. His current net worth is $33 billion.

Both of his parents were educators in China. Prior to being deported to rural areas and labelled a “pro-bourgeois genius,” Zhao’s father was a university instructor. In his adolescent years, Zhao worked a variety of service jobs, including at a McDonald’s, to support his family.

Before the establishment of Binance, he studied computer science at McGill University. After university, he worked as a developer for Bloomberg. He then became a partner at Fusion Systems. In 2013, he became Head of Development at Blockchain.

In 2015, Chanpeng Zhao started Bijie Tech, an exchange systems provider. Then in 2017, he launched Binance Holdings Inc. Binance is not publicly traded but has invested in important companies like Coinmarketcap, making it one of the largest stakeholders in the crypto world.

Eleven days after Binance’s initial coin sale, which was successful in raising $15 million, trading on the exchange started. Zhao developed Binance into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume in less than eight months.

In 2017, Zhao also introduced Binance Coin, a utility token that offers its owners a number of advantages, such as lower trading costs. In April 2019, Binance introduced Binance Smart Chain, a smart contract platform that competes with Ethereum.

3. David Cheriton

David Cheriton is a professor at the University of Stanford. He is one of the richest people in Canada with an estimated net worth of $14 billion. He made his fortune thanks to an early $200,000 investment in Google.

Asides his Google investment David has also founded several different companies. Some of these companies include Arista Networks, which went public in 2014; Kealia, which was sold to Sun Microsystems in 2004, and Granite Systems, which was sold to Cisco in 1996. He has invested in at least 20 businesses.

He is an authority on distributed computing and computer networking, and he has knowledge of how to spot significant market opportunities and develop the architectures required to take advantage of them.

Aside from being one of the most successful venture capitalists in recent times, Cheriton also has a reputation for a frugal lifestyle, avoiding costly cars or large houses. He was once included in a list of “cheapskate billionaires”.

4. Jim Pattison

Jim Pattison is also one of the richest people in Canada. He is an investor, philanthropist, businessman and one of the richest people in Canada in 2024 with an estimated net worth of $9.1 billion.

He is the head of the Jim Pattison Group. This empire operates in 85 countries spanning an array of industries such as supermarkets, lumber, fisheries, disposable packaging, theme parks, auto dealers and more.

Following his appointment to the Order of Canada (1987) and the Order of British Columbia (1990) as well as his receipt of the Governor General’s Commemorative Medal for Canada’s 125th Anniversary, Pattison was also inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in December 2018.

In addition, he received the Entrepreneur of the Year – Lifetime Achievement Award (2000), the International Horatio Alger Award (U.S.A., 2004), and the Young Presidents Organization Canadian Icon Award, as well as induction into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Professional Sales Association Hall of Fame (2007)

He opened a Pontiac dealership in 1961, 25 years later, he was selling more cars than anyone else in Western Canada. He grew his business to include other companies such as Overwaitea Foods, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, Save-On-Foods, Guinness World Records and numerous TV and radio stations across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

5. Joseph Tsai

Joseph Tsai is the co-founder and executive vice chairman of the Chinese multinational technology company,  Alibaba Group. The Asian-Canadian businessman is the second-largest individual shareholder in the company only behind Jack Ma. With a net worth of $8.6 billion, he is one of the top 10 richest people in Canada in 2024.

Following the communists’ takeover of Mainland China in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War, the Tsai family fled to Taiwan as part of the Kuomintang exodus. Tsai was transported to the United States at the age of 13 to enrol at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where he played football (inside linebacker) and lacrosse.

He also owns the Brooklyn Nets of the American National Basketball Association (NBA), the New York Liberty of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the San Diego Seals of the National Lacrosse League.

Tsai was born in Taiwan but is a naturalised citizen of Canada. He started his business journey after he met Jack Ma in 1999. He quit the $700,000-a-year job at Investor AB and offered to join Ma as one of the founding members of Alibaba. He single-handedly established Alibaba’s financial and legal structure.