AI Minted More Than 50 New Billionaires In 2025

AI was all anyone could talk about in 2025. But while talk is cheap, AI companies’ valuations certainly aren’t. This year, AI was a huge wealth generator for the entrepreneurs building out models, infrastructure and applications that are quickly becoming part of everyday life, helping mint more than 50 new billionaires.

The year began with a moment that turned the intensity in the AI race up to 11. In January, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s open-source model, which it trained with a fraction of the computing power required by the big American AI companies, rattled financial markets and catapulted founder Liang Wenfeng to billionaire status. His net worth is now an estimated $11.5 billion.

In the early months of the year, Anthropic, developer of AI model Claude, raised $3.5 billion in funding at a $61.5 billion valuation, vaulting all seven of its cofounders into the billionaire ranks. The company went on to raise a total of $16.5 billion from investors this year alone and boosted its valuation to $183 billion in September. Massive funding rounds for AI companies were no rarity: This year, investors poured more than $200 billion into the AI sector, with AI startups capturing 50% of all global funding—up 16% from 2024, according to Crunchbase.

Startups weren’t just raising money. They were spending it too, with massive commitments to build out AI infrastructure. In January, President Trump announced OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle would spend $500 billion on a huge data center project called Stargate. The announcement marked the start of a flurry of activity from tech companies like Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft that each committed upwards of $65 billion to building AI infrastructure this year alone. Thanks to the voracious appetite for data centers, a number of different companies creating the building blocks for AI minted more than a dozen new billionaires this year—including the cofounders of semiconductor networking firm Astera Labs, data center real estate firm Fermi, Korean chips maker ISU Petasys, Korean electrical transformer manufacturer Sanil Electric and cloud computing provider CoreWeave among others.

The race to develop AI wasn’t limited to models or data centers. A talent war among tech companies offering handsome packages to poach top AI talent culminated in June, with Meta buying a 49% stake in data labeling startup Scale AI for more than $14 billion. As part of the deal, 28-year-old CEO and cofounder Alexandr Wang, who first became a billionaire in 2022 thanks to his stake in Scale, joined Meta as chief AI officer. The deal, which valued Scale AI at around $29 billion, briefly made Wang’s cofounder Lucy Guo, 31, the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, worth an estimated $1.4 billion (she left the company in 2018, but held onto her stock).

Meta’s new ownership stake in Scale AI made room for other data labeling startups to step up. Surge AI founder Edwin Chen’s estimated 75% stake in the Scale AI rival is worth an estimated $18 billion—the company’s $1.2 billion in revenue last year gave the company a $24 billion valuation, according to Forbes estimates. Data labeller Mercor hit a $10 billion valuation in October after a $250 million funding round, making its three 22-year-old cofounders the youngest self-made billionaires of all time, worth an estimated $2.2 billion each.

In September, the launch of OpenAI’s Sora 2 took over social media feeds with AI-generated images and videos. Billions in funding went to startups working on multimodal AI formats including image, video and audio. Notably, ElevenLabs’ two cofounders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski became billionaires this year after their AI audio generation startup raised $100 million at a $6.6 billion valuation in October. (Read the Forbes cover story on them here.)

Weekly AI usage in the workplace increased from 11% in 2023 to 23% this year, according to a Gallup Workplace survey. Among developers, AI use is even higher. This year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (who is also a new billionaire thanks to AI) said up to 30% of the company’s code was being written by AI. Anysphere, the company that sells AI coding tool Cursor—which counts more than half of the Fortune 500 as customers—nabbed a $29 billion valuation in November, making its four cofounders billionaires. Businesses that heavily embraced AI, like video game company Paper Games, language translation software TransPerfect and Chinese AI robot maker Orbbec, also made their founders billionaires.

Here are some of the notable AI startup founders who became billionaires this year (from richest to “poorest”):

Edwin Chen

^{Net worth: $18 billion | Source of wealth: Surge AI | Citizenship: United States}

In less than five years, Chen built data labeling company Surge AI into a behemoth that brought in $1.2 billion in revenue in 2024, with no reported venture capital backing. With customers like Google, Meta, Microsoft and AI labs Anthropic and Mistral, the company is worth an estimated $24 billion based on its revenue alone. CEO Chen’s estimated 75% stake in the company is worth an estimated $18 billion and made him the wealthiest newcomer on this year’s Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. At age 37, he was also the youngest member on that list.

Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor

^{Net worth: $2.5 billion (each) | Source of wealth: Sierra | Citizenship: United States}

Silicon Valley A-listers Taylor and Bavor became billionaires in September when their startup Sierra raised $350 million in a round that valued the company at $10 billion. Founded by the duo in 2023, the startup is replacing customer service with AI agents for hundreds of large companies, like retailer The North Face and electric vehicle maker Rivian. Over half of its customers have revenues north of $1 billion, and 20% of them have revenue of more than $10 billion, the company says. Taylor and Beavor each own roughly 25% of the company, according to Forbes estimates.

Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha

^{Net worth: $2.2 billion (each) | Source of wealth: Mercor | Citizenship: United States}

In October, Foody, Hiremath and Midha became the youngest self-made billionaires of all time at age 22 when their startup Mercor raised $350 million, valuing the company at $10 billion. They beat out Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire nearly two decades ago at age 23. Founded by the trio in 2023, Mercor helps Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to train their models by recruiting experts and PhDs to evaluate and fine tune data. Forbes estimates each cofounder has an approximate 22% stake in the company.

Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin

^{Net worth: $1.6 billion (each) | Source of wealth: Lovable | Citizenship: Sweden}

‘Vibe coding’ startup Lovable’s two cofounders became billionaires in December after raising $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation. The company became the fastest growing software company of all time, after reaching more than $100 million in annualized revenue in just eight months by allowing users, even those with no coding experience, to create websites and apps with just a written prompt. Forbes estimates cofounders Osika and Hedin each have an approximate 24% stake in the company.

Lucy Guo

^{Net worth: $1.4 billion | Source of wealth: Scale AI | Citizenship: United States}

31-year-old Guo unseated Taylor Swift as the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire when Meta bought a 49% stake in the data labeling company Scale AI, which she cofounded with Alexandr Wang in 2016. Though she left the company two years later, she held onto her stake, which has been diluted to roughly 3%. Add in her second startup Passes, a Patreon-like app for content creators, valued north of $150 million, and her net worth sits around $1.4 billion, Forbes estimates. Guo was unseated as the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire in December after 29-year-old Kalshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara, 29, took the title.

Michael Truell, Aman Sanger, Sualeh Asif and Arvid Lunnemark

^{Net worth: $1.3 billion (each) | Source of wealth: Cursor | Citizenship: United States, Pakistan, Sweden}

AI coding tool Cursor raised $2.3 billion in November, valuing the three-year-old startup at $29.3 billion. The company announced it had reached more than $1 billion in annualized revenue from customers including Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, Shopify and PayPal. Forbes estimates that the four cofounders each hold a 4% stake in the company.

Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski

^{Net Worth: $1.1 billion (each) | Source of wealth: ElevenLabs | Citizenship: Poland}

After raising a total of $300 million, ElevenLabs, which offers AI models that generate human-sounding voices, reached a $6.6 billion valuation in October, making its cofounders billionaires. One of Europe’s most valuable startups, the company brought in nearly $200 million in trailing 12-month revenue. Half of that comes from large corporations like Cisco and Twilio, which use the tool for customer service calls or job interviews. The other half comes from YouTubers, podcasters and authors, the company says. Forbes estimates that each cofounder has a 17% stake.