Three 22-year-olds become the world's youngest self-made billionaires thanks to AI

(Dan Tri) - In the spring of 2023, while his classmates were preparing for their final exams, 20-year-old Brendan Foody decided to skip the exam to focus on his startup.

“I knew I wanted to drop out before my final exams in my second year of university. I just didn’t want to take the exams,” Brendan Foody said of his decision to drop out of university to focus on his startup.

At that time, Foody found things that he could not learn in the classroom. A few months ago, Foody and two friends from high school, Adarsh ​​Hiremath and Surya Midha, came up with an idea to build a model connecting companies with skilled engineers abroad, helping the two sides find each other and they would stand in the middle to collect service fees.

In 2023, the three young men then decided to drop out of school and together founded a startup called Mercor, headquartered in San Francisco, USA. This company uses AI to optimize the recruitment process, helping businesses find talent quickly and in accordance with requirements.

Adarsh ​​Hiremath (left), Brendan Foody (center) and Surya Midha dropped out of school to start their own businesses and became billionaires at the age of 22 (Photo: Forbes).

Mercor also participates in training AI models by connecting the right experts in each field with tasks related to data and machine learning models.

Brendan Foody says his decision to drop out of university to focus on his startup was the right one.

“When I was in college, work was something I needed to devote time to. When I dropped out, Mercor became something I couldn’t stop thinking about,” Brendan Foody said. “It felt right to invest my time every day into Mercor.”

Brendan Foody also believes that AI will not compete with humans for jobs, but instead will help reallocate the workforce appropriately. For example, when AI tools are used to do repetitive office tasks, humans will be brought up the value chain as trainers of AI in reasoning, decision-making and creativity.

It was the vision of Brendan Foody, now CEO of Mercor, that helped the company attract a lot of attention from investors.

Within nine months of its founding, Mercor had brought in its three young founders their first million dollars in revenue. Two years later, Mercor had become a crowdfunded startup valued at $10 billion, making the three 22-year-olds the world’s youngest self-made billionaires (those who became billionaires through their own efforts, not through inheritance).

This achievement previously belonged to Mark Zuckerberg, when the Facebook founder became the world's youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 23. Zuckerberg has held this position since 2008 until now.

Venture capital “fever” in AI startups

As the AI ​​“fever” continues to explode globally, investors are increasingly pouring money into AI startups.

Many AI startups are valued at billions of dollars despite being founded only a few months ago and not having any real products yet, which shows that investors believe in the vision and leadership of the company's founders, rather than relying on the actual product launched.

Notable among them are Scale AI, founded by Alexandr Wang, and Thinking Machines Lab, founded by "AI general" Mira Murati.

Alexandr Wang (left) and Mira Murati are two of the highly regarded names in the AI ​​world today (Photo: Getty).

Although born in 1997, Alexandr Wang is considered a rare talent in the field of AI. Wang studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Computer Science , but dropped out after only one year to start his own business. In June, Meta spent $15 billion to buy 49% of Scale AI's shares and brought Wang to work under Mark Zuckerberg.

Meanwhile, Mira Murati (born 1988), was the Vice President of Product Research and Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, responsible for developing popular AI projects such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Sora. In November 2023, Murati briefly took over as CEO at OpenAI, replacing Sam Altman, who was fired.

In September 2024, Mira Murati left OpenAI and founded Thinking Machines Lab, which focuses on developing custom, high-performance AI systems. Although it has no real products yet, the company is still valued at more than $12 billion. Market analysts say that the name Mira Murati is a guarantee of Thinking Machines Lab's success.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/cong-nghe/ba-chang-trai-22-tuoi-tro-thanh-ty-phu-tu-than-tre-nhat-the-gioi-nho-ai-20251118031308974.htm