A wave of artificial intelligence founders in their 20s and 30s are becoming billionaires as the AI boom reshapes the path to extreme wealth, with the time to reach billionaire status shrinking from a decade to roughly three years.
The New York Times reported Sunday, citing data from startup analytics firm PitchBook, that at least seven AI startups including Perplexity, Mercor and Scale AI have surpassed $10 billion in valuation this year, elevating their founders to billionaire status.
Notably, six of the seven companies were founded after 2022, excluding Scale AI. Thinking Machines Lab, established in February this year, achieved hypergrowth in just 10 months. Most founders are in their 20s and 30s. Brett Adcock of Figure AI and Ilya Sutskever of Safe Superintelligence are among the oldest at 39, while all three co-founders of AI recruiting startup Mercor are just 22 years old.
"Investors are competitively driving up valuations, creating new billionaires in record time," the NYT noted, adding that this pace far exceeds that of Elon Musk, the world's richest person. Musk founded X.com, which later became PayPal, in 1999 but did not join the billionaire ranks until 2012, after selling PayPal, founding SpaceX and taking Tesla public.
The rapid emergence of newly minted billionaires has raised concerns about an AI bubble. Critics point out that founders are sitting on fortunes despite having yet to demonstrate substantial results. Safe Superintelligence, founded by former OpenAI researcher Sutskever, raised $2 billion this year at a $32 billion valuation but has not released any products.
According to Crunchbase, investment flowing into AI startups reached $202 billion this year, up 77.2% from $114 billion last year. Some observers note that these fortunes remain paper wealth based on unrealized stock valuations.
"The key question is which of these companies will survive," said Jai Das, partner at venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures. "If startups fail to deliver on their promises, their wealth could vanish."
