AI created a wave of billionaires overnight.

The artificial intelligence craze is creating a new class of billionaires, mostly very young startup founders whose fortunes have skyrocketed in just a few years.

Like previous tech boom cycles, the artificial intelligence (AI) wave is creating a new class of billionaires, largely emerging from very young startups. While this wealth is largely "on paper," it reflects the unprecedented growth rate of the AI ​​sector and its strong appeal to global investors.

The rise of AI has increased the wealth of familiar names in the tech world, such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Simultaneously, the AI ​​craze has also spawned a new generation of billionaires, emerging from smaller, lesser-known startups that are now valued at tens of billions of dollars.

The AI ​​billionaire generation

According to observers, these entrepreneurs could become the future "power brokers" of Silicon Valley, similar to the role that wealthy tech leaders played after the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. At that time, many newly emerging billionaires went on to invest in or shape subsequent waves of technology.

Among the emerging AI billionaires are Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, co-founders of Scale AI, a company specializing in data labeling for artificial intelligence models. Scale AI gained attention when it received a $14.3 billion investment from Meta in June.

Another example is the founding team of Cursor, an AI programming startup comprised of Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Aman Sanger, and Arvid Lunnemark. Following a funding round in November, Cursor was valued at $27 billion , catapulting its founders into the ranks of billionaires.

The three founders of Mercor, a startup specializing in AI data processing, are all in their 20s. Photo: New York Times .

Data from PitchBook, along with information from companies and insiders, shows that many other AI startups have also reached "nine-figure" valuations. This list includes Perplexity, Mercor, Figure AI, Safe Superintelligence, Harvey, and Thinking Machines Lab. The majority of these companies have seen their valuations skyrocket this year, turning founders' shares into potential goldmines.

Jai Das, a partner at venture capital fund Sapphire Ventures, compares the emerging AI billionaires to railroad tycoons of the late 19th century, who took full advantage of the technological wave of their time. However, he also warns that this wealth may only be temporary if the startups fail to meet expectations.

"The question is which of these companies will survive and who will actually become a true billionaire, not just a nominal one on paper," Das said.

Becoming a billionaire "overnight"

The first commonality among this group of entrepreneurs is their incredibly rapid wealth accumulation. While Elon Musk's journey to billionaire status spanned many years, from selling a company to eBay in 2002 to Tesla and SpaceX truly taking off, these emerging AI billionaires rose to prominence in a much shorter timeframe. Most founded their companies less than three years prior, primarily after ChatGPT launched, and quickly saw their valuations driven up by investors.

Mira Murati, former Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, is a prime example. She announced the founding of Thinking Machines Lab in February. Just four months later, the company was valued at $10 billion , even though it hadn't launched any products at that time.

Mira Murati quickly led Thinking Machines Lab to reach the billion-dollar mark in just four months. Photo: Bloomberg .

Another former OpenAI executive, Ilya Sutskever, founded Safe Superintelligence in June 2024. The company has not yet announced a product but is valued at $32 billion after raising $2 billion this year, according to PitchBook.

Brett Adcock, CEO of Figure AI, founded the company in 2022. According to Figure AI, his net worth is estimated at approximately $19.5 billion .

The rate of wealth growth for AI startups has been particularly striking this year. Harvey, an AI legal software startup, has raised capital three times in just a few months. Each funding round significantly boosted the company's valuation, from $3 billion to $8 billion , rapidly increasing the value of the shares held by its two founders, Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra.

An exception to this rapid growth is Scale AI, a company that operated relatively quietly before receiving a significant investment from Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg subsequently appointed Alexandr Wang as the head of AI at the social media giant.

Young and talented

The second striking characteristic of this wave is the young age of its founders. Youth is a familiar hallmark of tech booms. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were in their 20s when they founded Google in 1998, while Mark Zuckerberg was only 19 when he founded Facebook.

"Like the Gilded Age or the dot-com boom, AI is making some very young people rich in a very short amount of time," said Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington.

Alexandr Wang is one of the prominent young founders in the field of AI. Photo: Bloomberg .

Brendan Foody, CEO of Mercor, a startup specializing in AI data processing, dropped out of Georgetown University in 2023 to co-found the company with two high school friends, Adarsh ​​Hiremeth and Surya Midha. Mercor was valued at $10 billion in a funding round in October.

Other young billionaires include Michael Truell, CEO of Cursor, and his co-founders, all in their 20s. They met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated in 2022. A $2.3 billion funding round last month raised the valuation of parent company Anysphere to $27 billion .

The final common thread is the gender disparity. The vast majority of emerging AI billionaires are men, a familiar trend in previous technology cycles. Only a handful of women, such as Lucy Guo or Mira Murati, have achieved similar levels of wealth. According to O'Mara, the AI ​​craze once again exposes the gender "homogeneity" of those who benefit most from this new wave of technology.

Source: https://znews.vn/ai-tao-ra-lan-song-ty-phu-moi-post1615846.html