How Carlos Slim Got Rich — 2026 Net Worth Breakdown

Slim built the core of his fortune in 1982, when foreign investors were fleeing Mexico's debt crisis — he went the other way, buying up struggling Mexican businesses across candy, tires, mining, construction, and retail under the Grupo Carso umbrella, a bet on the country's eventual recovery that paid off over the following decades.

When Mexico privatized its national phone company Telmex in 1990, Slim led a consortium with SBC and France Télécom that paid $1.76 billion for it. He went on to win management control of the company outright — and for more than a decade, that near-monopoly on Mexican telecom was the anchor of his fortune, before he expanded it into América Móvil, now Latin America's largest mobile carrier.

As of early July 2026, Slim's net worth is estimated at roughly $124.6 billion, ranking him around #15 among the world's billionaires and still comfortably Mexico's richest person — built on his controlling stakes in América Móvil, holding company Grupo Carso, and banking group Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

Carlos Slim was born in Mexico City in 1940 to Lebanese immigrant parents and trained as a civil engineer before moving into business and investing in the 1960s. He built the conglomerate Grupo Carso through the 1980s, buying into candy, tires, mining, construction, retail, and banking while foreign investors were pulling money out of Mexico's troubled economy.

His defining move came in 1990, when he led a consortium with SBC and France Télécom that bought the newly privatized national phone company Telmex for $1.76 billion. He later won management control of Telmex outright, and in 2000 relaunched its mobile arm as América Móvil, which grew into the largest mobile-phone operator in Latin America.