(Image courtesy of MacRumors)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ stock is rising -- both with his company and in a new annual ranking of the world’s billionaires.

MacRumors is reporting on the latest Forbes annual list of the world’s billionaires, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs ranked at 178th place with $3.4 billion in 2009. Cupertino’s main man leapt up the chart for 2010, tying with six others for 136th place and a net worth of $5.5 billion. Jobs’ net worth is even up from an October, 2009 ranking that Forbes did of the richest Americans at $5.1 billion.

“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop,” Forbes writes of the Apple king. “Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon's Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements.”

Of course, Jobs’ fortune is not all pinned on Apple, Inc.: He’s also Disney’s largest individual shareholder thanks to the company’s 2006 acquisition of Pixar, the computer animation giant that Jobs financially rescued from George Lucas years ago. In fact, Jobs’ stake in Disney alone is worth $4.2 billion, with the rest made up from his work at Apple, where the stock has been high-flying of late.

The top spot on the list of world billionaires was taken by Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim Helú at $53.5 billion, just slightly ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who held the top spot in 14 out of the previous 15 years. Maybe leaving Microsoft wasn’t such a good idea after all?