AI created over 50 new billionaires in 2025, with the youngest being just 22 years old.

Henry from Aofeisi, QbitAI | WeChat official account QbitAI

In 2025, AI is truly a money - making machine from all directions.

According to the latest data from Forbes, just this year, the AI industry has created more than 50 new billionaires.

The latest data from Forbes

Among them, Edwin Chen, the CEO of the data annotation company SurgeAI, tops the list with a net worth of $18 billion; Liang Wenfeng, who stirred up Silicon Valley at the beginning of the year with DeepSeekR1, has also reached a wealth peak of $11.5 billion.

However, while new money is pouring in, the old money hasn't left the game.

This year, Elon Musk's net worth increased by nearly 50% year - on - year, reaching $645 billion; Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, thanks to the strong rebound of the company in the AI field, ranked second and fourth respectively on the Silicon Valley rich list, with their wealth growing by nearly 60% in the past year.

Jensen Huang and Elon Musk

More broadly, AI has attracted nearly half of the global venture capital market's financing.

So, regardless of the Kondratiev wave, this wave of the AI boom has at least fully arrived in terms of "money".

New money is in place

According to Crunchbase data, investors have poured more than $202.3 billion into the AI field this year, with about 50% flowing to startups, a 16% increase from 2024.

Crunchbase data

These funds cover the entire AI ecosystem - from basic models, AI infrastructure, application development to talent competition, and have also created a group of new billionaires.

In the basic model track, the popularity of the DeepSeek series of models has directly pushed the assets of founder Liang Wenfeng to $11.5 billion (approximately 80.5 billion yuan), a leap - forward growth compared to the 13 billion yuan on the Hurun list at the beginning of the year.

Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek

At the beginning of this year, Anthropic, the parent company of "the god of programming" Claude, raised $3.5 billion at a valuation of $61.5 billion, making all seven of its co - founders billionaires.

Co - founders of Anthropic

Throughout the following year, Anthropic raised $16.5 billion from investors. The company's valuation has also soared, expanding from $61.5 billion at the beginning of the year to $183 billion.

The pockets of several founders have become much fatter...

In terms of AI infrastructure, a Standard & Poor's report shows that in 2025, $61 billion in hot money was poured into data centers. This huge demand for data centers has also created more than a dozen new billionaires in the companies that "sell shovels".

This includes the co - founders of companies such as the semiconductor network company Astera Labs, the data center real estate company Fermi, the South Korean chip manufacturer ISU Petasys, the South Korean power transformer manufacturer Sanil Electric, and the cloud computing provider CoreWeave.

Meanwhile, as the core "fuel" for AI operation and training, the data track has given rise to a group of young and wealthy billionaires.

After being acquired by Meta, Alexander Wang, the founder of ScaleAI, has continued to be on the list of billionaires as the chief artificial intelligence officer.

Alexander Wang, the founder of ScaleAI

His co - founder, 31 - year - old Lucy Guo, has also replaced Taylor Swift to top the list of the world's youngest self - made female billionaires.

Lucy Guo

However, in December last year, 29 - year - old Luana Lopes Lara, the co - founder of Kalshi, replaced her as the "world's youngest self - made female billionaire".

(You should make a name for yourself early!)

Edwin Chen, the founder of the data annotation company Surge AI, with about 75% of the company's shares, has a net worth of about $18 billion and has become a new billionaire.

Edwin Chen, the founder of Surge AI

It's worth mentioning that at only 37 years old, he is also the youngest member of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list.

And the three 22 - year - old co - founders of another data annotation company, Mercor, Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, have become the youngest self - made billionaires in history, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg, as the company's financing and valuation have exceeded $10 billion.

Mercor

In terms of application products, Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, the two co - founders of ElevenLabs, became billionaires in October this year when their AI audio - generation company, ElevenLabs, raised $100 million and was valued at $6.6 billion.

Co - founders of ElevenLabs

In the AI Coding track, Cursor was valued at $29 billion in November, making its four co - founders, Michael Truell, Aman Sanger, Sualeh Asif, and Arvid Lunnemark, billionaires.

Co - founders of Cursor

The startup Lovable in the same track, "Vibe Code", completed a $330 million financing in December last year, and the company was valued at $6.6 billion.

Its two co - founders, Anton Osika and Fabian Hedina, have also joined the ranks of billionaires.

Co - founders of Lovable

These "young talents" inevitably make people think of Mark Zuckerberg's biographical film The Social Network and that classic line:

A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.

Screenshot from the movie The Social Network

And this may continue to be rewritten by this new group of billionaires in the AI era:

A billion dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Ten billion dollars.

New money emerges quickly, old money earns more

Although these young faces have quickly accumulated wealth, the thickness of their wealth is still far less than that of the old money in Silicon Valley.

According to Bloomberg data, when the New York Stock Exchange closed on Christmas Eve, the top 10 American technology founders and CEOs had more than $2.5 trillion in cash, equity, and other investments. This figure is $600 billion more than the $1.9 trillion at the beginning of this year.

Among them, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, still ranks first, with his net worth increasing by 49% year - on - year to $645 billion.

Benefiting from Google's strong rebound in the AI field, Google's two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, ranked second and fourth respectively with net worths of $270 billion and $251 billion, with growth rates of 61% and 59% respectively.

Google founders

Jeff Bezos of Amazon ranks fourth with $255 billion. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, has fallen back after a sharp rise in September. His wealth has dropped by nearly 40% from the peak, and he ranks fifth with $251 billion, a 31% increase year - on - year.

Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle

Due to the weak stock price of social media, Mark Zuckerberg's ranking has dropped and he has been surpassed by Google's two founders. He ranks sixth with $236 billion, with a growth rate of only 14%.

And Jensen Huang, with NVIDIA's strong performance in the GPU field, ranks eighth among the richest technology executives in the United States with a net worth of $156 billion.

Sam Altman and Jensen Huang