How 25 individuals unlocked billions using AI tech

Meet the billionaires riding the AI boom

Artificial intelligence (AI) is minting 10-figure fortunes faster than any other industry in history, seizing the crown from the volatile world of cryptocurrency. Amid a gold rush now spanning 498 unicorns (billion-dollar startup companies) worth $2.7 trillion (£2tn), investors and founders alike are cashing in big-time.

At breakneck speed, AI has created the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, who's overtaken Taylor Swift in the wealth stakes, and propelled entrepreneurs, scientists, cloud-infrastructure pioneers, and more into the three-comma club. Read on to discover 25 people who are now billionaires thanks to this game-changing tech. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

Existing billionaire fortunes turbocharged by AI

Before we move on to the new class of super-rich, it's worth noting that a slew of existing tech billionaires have seen their fortunes skyrocket off the back of the AI boom. In September, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (pictured) briefly became the world's richest person following a surge in the firm's stock courtesy of AI infrastructure deals.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's Jensen Huang has soared in the billionaire rankings as demand for AI chips explodes. And Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have added tens of billions of dollars to their net worth totals as Alphabet, the parent company of Google, leans ever harder into AI.

Existing billionaire fortunes turbocharged by AI

Mark Zuckerberg became the world's second-richest individual for the first time in October 2024 as Meta stock soared on AI hype. And AI has also boosted the fortunes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.

On the flip side, OpenAI's Sam Altman, the face of the AI boom, actually owes the bulk of his wealth to venture capital investments and early tech bets rather than AI itself. The frenzy has amplified his profile far more than his fortune.

Now let's meet the new AI billionaires, as identified by Forbes, ranked in order of their wealth...

Liang Wenfeng, net worth: $1 billion (£742m)

A hedge fund manager turned large language model (LLM) whizz, China's Liang Wenfeng is the founder of Hangzhou-based DeepSeek. The startup stunned the AI world in January when it released its R1 reasoning model, which delivers cutting-edge performance at a fraction of the cost of its US rivals.

Needless to say, the industry-disrupting breakthrough has worked wonders on Liang's net worth, cementing his place in the billionaire club.

Luis von Ahn, net worth: $1.1 billion (£816m)

Luis von Ahn co-founded the addictive and super-popular Duolingo language-learning app in 2011 and hasn’t looked back. Raised by a single mother in Guatemala before moving to the US in 1996 for college, he’s a real success story.

Now an 'AI-first' company, Duolingo has woven generative tech into everything from lesson design to personalised tutoring. That shift has supercharged its valuation and propelled von Ahn into the billionaire ranks.

Severin Hacker, net worth: $1.1 billion (£816m)

Born in Switzerland, Severin Hacker was completing his PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University when he and von Ahn, who was acting as his adviser, spun the research into what became Duolingo.

Now serving as the firm’s chief technology officer, Hacker has been instrumental in the app's engineering and its shrewd AI pivot.

Lucy Guo, net worth: $1.3 billion (£965m)

Teenage coding prodigy Lucy Guo left Carnegie Mellon in 2014 after winning a $100,000 (£74k) Thiel Fellowship to pursue startups instead of a college degree. Two years later, she and Alexandr Wang founded Scale AI, a company that provides the annotated data essential for training AI systems.

Though Guo left the company in 2018, she kept a sizeable stake in the firm. It's paid off handsomely. Earlier this year, the 30-year-old dethroned Taylor Swift to become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire as Scale AI's valuation soared following its acquisition.

Sundar Pichai, net worth: $1.3 billion (£965m)

Indian-born Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004 and steadily rose through the ranks, becoming CEO in 2014 and taking the helm of parent company Alphabet five years later.

Pichai crossed into the billionaire ranks last December, driven primarily by AI. The release of Google’s Gemini 2.0 chatbot sent Alphabet’s share price climbing and with it Pichai’s fortune; his 0.02% stake in the company was enough to push him over the three-comma line.

Yao Runhao, net worth: $1.3 billion (£965m)

Who knew AI boyfriends could be so lucrative? Yao Runhao heads Shanghai's Paper Games, which has taken China by storm with Love and Deepspace, a wildly successful dating simulation mobile game that launched last year.

With the game rapidly becoming a pop culture phenomenon, Paper Games' valuation has swelled, lifting Yao into the billionaire ranks in the process.

Brett Adcock, net worth: $1.5 billion (£1.1bn)

A serial entrepreneur with the Midas touch, Brett Adcock had a string of successful startups under his belt before founding humanoid AI robot maker Figure in 2022.

Adcock, who owns half the company, reached billionaire status earlier this year when the Microsoft and Nvidia-backed Figure scored a valuation of $2.6 billion (£1.9bn).

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Jacob DeWitte, net worth: $1.7 billion (£1.3bn)

Jacob DeWitte co-founded nuclear startup Oklo in 2013 while studying nuclear engineering at MIT. As its CEO, he's ridden a wave of investor excitement around small-scale fission reactors, seen as a potential power source for the AI era.

Despite having zero revenue and ongoing losses, Oklo’s stock has skyrocketed, sending its market cap to $21 billion (£15.6bn) and DeWitte’s stake soaring. His visibility blew up further this year when he joined Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss nuclear fast-tracking.

Caroline DeWitte, net worth: $1.7 billion (£1.3bn)

Caroline DeWitte co-founded Oklo alongside her husband Jacob in 2013, after earning a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from MIT. The firm’s COO, she's helped steer the company towards its latest success: breaking ground on its first neutron reactor at Idaho National Laboratory.

Like her husband, her fortune stems from their combined 16% stake and share sales. At 42, she joins a tiny cohort of self-made female billionaires in the US and one of just a handful under 50.

Phil Shawe, net worth: $1.8 billion (£1.3bn)

Phil Shawe co-founded translation giant TransPerfect out of an NYU dorm room in 1992. After a long and bitter breakup with his former fiancée and business partner Liz Elting, he finally secured full control of the company in 2018, buying her half at auction for $385 million (£286m).

Since then, Shawe has pushed the language-services company deep into AI, combining machine translation with human expertise and expanding into data annotation through its DataForce arm. TransPerfect's valuation has ballooned, and Shawe is now firmly ensconced in the billionaire club.

Jack Cogen, net worth: $3.1 billion (£2.3bn)

CoreWeave minted four billionaires earlier this year after it went public and reached a monster $23 billion (£17.1bn) valuation. Founded in 2017 as a crypto company, the New Jersey-based business later pivoted to AI cloud computing, a timely move that has supercharged demand for its services and sent its valuation into the stratosphere.

An early investor and director, Jack Cogen owns around 4% of the red-hot AI firm.

Alexandr Wang, net worth: $3.2 billion (£2.4bn)

Alexandr Wang set up Scale AI with Lucy Guo in 2016 and guided it to become one of the hottest startups of the AI boom. He briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2021 before falling off the list as private valuations sagged, only to roar back after Scale hit a $14 billion (£10.4bn) valuation in 2024 and secured a landmark Pentagon contract the following year.

Wang stepped down as Scale’s CEO earlier this year to take on a new role as Meta’s Chief AI Officer, cementing his status as one of the defining figures of the AI age.

Joe Lonsdale, net worth: $3.5 billion (£2.6bn)

Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale has worn many hats as an entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Palantir and OpenGov. But it was AI that secured him billionaire status.

Through 8VC, the venture firm he launched in 2015, he has placed major bets on defence and AI-driven startups. His stake in Palantir, whose stock has jumped in value over the past year due to investor excitement about its AI tools, together with a slice of defence-tech darling Anduril, propelled him onto Forbes’ billionaire list for the first time in 2025.

Dario Amodei: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

Anthropic, the AI safety and research startup Dario Amodei co-founded after leaving OpenAI, has already birthed seven billionaires, a staggering achievement for a company established just four years ago.

As CEO, Amodei has steered Anthropic into the heart of the AI race, positioning it as a key rival to OpenAI with its Claude chatbot family. Backed by billions from investors and tech giants, Anthropic’s March 2025 funding round valued the firm at $61.5 billion (£45.7bn), securing Amodei and his co-founders' multibillion-dollar fortunes. They each own approximately 2% of the firm.

Daniela Amodei, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

Anthropic’s president and co-founder, Daniela Amodei is another of the few self-made female billionaires in tech. A former HR and policy executive at OpenAI, she teamed up with her brother Dario and five former OpenAI colleagues to launch Anthropic in 2021.

Today, she oversees operations and strategy in the company, which continues to go from strength to strength.

Jack Clark, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

A former tech writer for Bloomberg, Jack Clark has brought a savvy journalist's eye to Anthropic, which he co-founded along with the Amodeis and four other OpenAI alumni.

The firm's head of policy, Clark has played a major role in Anthropic's positioning as a safety-first AI company, highlighting its importance earlier this year when he appeared before the US Congress to discuss the AI arms race.

Jared Kaplan, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

A brilliant theoretical physicist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, Jared Kaplan was a researcher at OpenAI before co-founding Anthropic in 2021 with six former colleagues. He serves as the company's chief science officer.

Kaplan's academic work on quantum gravity and machine learning gave the startup scientific heft from the outset and has shaped Anthropic’s technical vision.

Sam McCandlish, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

Stanford University physics grad Sam McCandlish is Anthropic's chief technology officer.

Building on the experience he gleaned at OpenAI, the Anthropic co-founder is a specialist in machine learning and large-scale model training, and has played a crucial role in building Anthropic’s Claude chatbot family.

Chris Olah, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

One of the AI world’s most respected researchers, Chris Olah was, like Lucy Guo, a Thiel Fellow, opting to ditch college in 2012 to bring his expertise to startups. He co-founded Anthropic after years at OpenAI and Google Brain, and serves as its interpretability research lead.

The role makes sense as Olah is best known for his work on interpretability, which makes neural networks more transparent and understandable, a focus that has shaped Anthropic’s ethos of building safer, more reliable AI.

Tom Brown, net worth: $3.7 billion (£2.7bn)

Tom Brown, another OpenAI defector, was the lead engineer behind GPT-3, the breakthrough model that cemented large language models in the public imagination.

At Anthropic, he applied that expertise to building its flagship chatbot Claude. Brown is the firm's chief compute officer and continues to be a central figure in Anthropic's mission to develop safe, powerful AI.

Brannin McBee, net worth: $4 billion (£3bn)

Brannin McBee founded CoreWeave in 2017 together with Brian Venturo and Mike Intrator.

A finance graduate and former commodities trader, McBee is CoreWeave's chief development officer and has helped steer the firm toward its true calling: AI cloud computing. He owns around 5% of the company, which gives him a substantial net worth of $4 billion (£3bn).

Brian Venturo, net worth: $5.4 billion (£4bn)

Brian Venturo, CoreWeave's chief strategy officer, boasts a bigger piece of the pie, with an approximate 7% stake in the firm. He's served in his current position since 2024, having started as chief technology officer.

Venturo studied economics at Haverford College. He previously managed energy and emissions portfolios at Natsource and later co-founded natural gas hedge fund Hudson Ridge Asset Management.

Mike Intrator, net worth: $8.6 billion (£6.4bn)

The wealthiest of CoreWeave’s four billionaire co-founders, CEO Mike Intrator holds around 11% of the AI cloud-computing giant. He has steered the company to rapid growth and earlier this year signed off on a $12 billion (£8.9bn) deal to supply compute power to OpenAI.

Intrator’s career began in finance and he spent more than a decade at Natsource, where he met Brian Venturo in 2006. The duo launched Hudson Ridge Asset Management in 2014 before joining forces again to co-found CoreWeave.

Edwin Chen, net worth: $18 billion (£13.4bn)

The youngest member of the Forbes 400, Edwin Chen has been described as a low-key billionaire, but his impact on AI is anything but quiet.

In 2020 he founded Surge AI, billed as the world’s most powerful platform for training artificial intelligence to understand language by having humans label text. With big-name clients including Alphabet and Anthropic, Surge turned over $1.2 billion (£893m) in 2024. An MIT graduate who previously worked for Twitter, Google, and Facebook, Chen owns roughly 75% of the highly valued company, hence his jaw-dropping wealth.

Chen Tianshi, net worth: $22.8 billion (£16.9bn)

The richest of the newly minted AI billionaires, Chen Tianshi is sitting on a fortune of $22.8 billion (£16.9bn). And it doesn't take a genius, AI or otherwise, to figure out why.

Chen is the CEO and co-founder of Cambricon Technologies. China's answer to Nvidia, it's cleaning up on the back of the AI boom. Chen is the firm's biggest individual shareholder, owning between 28% and 29% of the firm, which is valued at a cool $80.7 billion (£60.1bn).

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