Fuelled by AI, prediction markets and online gambling, there are more self-made billionaires under 30 than ever before, 13 up from a previous record of 7.
By Matt Durot, Forbes Staff and Sofia Chierchio, Contributor.
On October 7, Intercontinental Exchange (the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange) invested $2 billion into Polymarket, pushing up the prediction market platform’s valuation to $9 billion. That made Polymarket’s 27-year-old founder, Shayne Coplan, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. His reign was short: 20 days later, he was overtaken by the three cofounders of AI startup Mercor. That trio of 22-year-olds became the youngest self-made billionaires ever, gaining 10-figure status even earlier than Mark Zuckerberg did 17 years ago at age 23. “It’s definitely crazy,” Mercor’s Foody told Forbes in October. “It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago.”
Then, in a remarkable stretch from November until December, another seven entrepreneurs under the age of 30 became billionaires, including Kalshi cofounder and former ballerina from Brazil Luana Lopes Lara, 29—now the youngest self-made woman billionaire on Earth and the only self-made woman billionaire in her 20s. (She turns 30 in May.) That means there are now a record 13 self-made billionaires under 30.
For all the hand-wringing about artificial intelligence killing off entry-level jobs, it’s creating something else at mind-blowing speed: billionaires barely old enough to rent a car. Industries and innovations that didn’t meaningfully exist a decade ago, including prediction markets and AI, now mint entrepreneurs with three-comma fortunes with astonishing speed. The last time Forbes counted anywhere close to this many young self-made billionaires was in 2022, when there were just seven self-made billionaires under age 30.
Back in April when Forbes published our annual World’s Billionaires list, there were only two under 30 entrepreneurs in the ranks: Alexandr Wang, 28, who sold a 49% stake in his AI startup Scale AI to Meta this summer for about $14 billion and left to become Meta’s chief AI officer, and Australian online casino mogul Ed Craven, 29, who is one of six on this list that hail from outside of the U.S. (including American citizen Tarek Mansour, 29, of Kalshi, who was born in California but grew up in Lebanon). Craven and Fabian Hedin, the 26-year-old cofounder of Swedish AI coding startup Lovable, are the only self-made billionaires under age 30 who have built and run their businesses outside the U.S. Wang and Craven are the two richest entrepreneurs under 30, worth $3.2 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively.
Beyond these 13 are an even larger and growing group of 17 Under 30 billionaires who inherited fortunes from their families, the youngest of which is 20-year-old German pharmaceuticals heir Johannes von Baumbach (estimated fortune: $5.8 billion). Altogether, there are 30 billionaires in their 20s. Despite this relative youth boom, these young entrepreneurs continue to be extraordinary outliers in a billionaire class that remains overwhelmingly older; there are at least 500 billionaires aged 80 or older and the average age of the world’s more than 3,100 billionaires is 67. Plus, even in a year defined by unprecedented youth, the clock keeps ticking. Three of these self-made billionaires are already 29, meaning their stay on the Under 30 list will be brief.
Here are the 13 self-made billionaires under the age of 30
(estimated net worths are as of December 12, 2025)
13. Ed Craven, 29
Net Worth: $2.8 billion
Location: Australia 🇦🇺
Source of Wealth: Online casino
Craven cofounded Australian crypto-backed online casino Stake.com in 2017 with billionaire Bijan Tehrani, 31, but the business really took off during the pandemic when it started paying content creators to livestream themselves gambling. Forbes estimates that Stake.com, which generated $4.7 billion of gross revenue in 2024, is worth nearly $6 billion.
12. Tarek Mansour, 29
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: Prediction Market
11. Luana Lopes Lara, 29
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: Brazil 🇧🇷
Source of Wealth: Prediction Market
International students from Lebanon and Brazil, respectively, Mansour and Lopes Lara met at MIT where they were computer science majors. They became closer during their internship at New York City-based quantitative trading firm Five Rings Capital in 2018; that same year, they cofounded New York City-based prediction market startup Kalshi, which now allows users to bet on the outcome of elections, sports games, pop culture events and more. Mansour and Lopes Lara joined the three-comma club in December after Kalshi raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation; the deal also made Lopes Lara the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire.
10. Alexandr Wang, 28
Net Worth: $3.2 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI
Wang cofounded data labelling startup Scale AI with fellow billionaire Lucy Guo, 31, in 2016. The pair had a falling out and Guo left the company in 2018, while Wang remained CEO until June, when Facebook’s parent company Meta bought 49% of Scale for about $14 billion. Wang, who joined Meta as chief AI officer as part of the deal briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2022 and reclaimed the title in May 2024. He was overtaken by prediction market startup Polymarket’s founder Shayne Coplan, 27, in October.
9. Shayne Coplan, 27
Net Worth: $1 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: Polymarket
During the early days of the pandemic in 2020, the NYU dropout founded New York-based prediction market platform Polymarket to allow people to wager on everything from election outcomes to entertainment awards. Polymarket acquired CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange and clearinghouse QCEX in July, which helped Polymarket gain federal approval to operate in the U.S. in November. In October, billionaire Jeff Sprecher’s global stock exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange poured $2 billion into Polymarket at a $9 billion valuation, briefly making Coplan the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
8. Fabian Hedin, 26
Net Worth: $1.6 billion
Location: Sweden 🇸🇪
Source of Wealth: AI Coding
Hedin launched Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable with cofounder Anton Osika, 35, in November 2024. The company, which uses AI to enable millions of non-coders to instantly turn their ideas into websites, apps and online side hustles, achieved $100 million in subscription revenue (on an annualized basis) in just eight months, making it the fastest-growing software startup in history. Hedin serves as chief technology officer of Lovable, which private investors valued at $6.6 billion in December, while Osika serves as CEO.
7. Arvid Lunnemark, 26
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: Sweden 🇸🇪
Source of Wealth: AI Software
6. Sualeh Asif, 25
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: Pakistan 🇵🇰
Source of Wealth: AI Software
5. Aman Sanger, 25
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI Software
4. Michael Truell, 25
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI Software
The four friends who met at MIT cofounded AI coding startup Cursor in 2022 in San Francisco, California. The company’s AI code editing software, which is used by millions of software developers at enterprises like Nvidia, Adobe and Uber, has generated more than $1 billion of annualized revenue, and private investors valued Cursor at $29.3 billion in November. Truell, who serves as CEO, and Sanger were high school classmates at New York City’s Horace Mann School.
3. Adarsh Hiremath, 22
Net Worth: $2.2 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI Software
2. Brendan Foody, 22
Net Worth: $2.2 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI Software
1. Surya Midha, 22
Net Worth: $2.2 billion
Location: United States 🇺🇸
Source of Wealth: AI Software
The three high school friends and 2024 Thiel Fellows cofounded AI recruiting startup Mercor in 2023 to help Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs train their models. Private investors valued the San Francisco-based startup at $10 billion in October, making its three cofounders the world’s youngest self-made billionaires ever at age 22. Midha, who serves as chairman, is the youngest of the trio by roughly two months. Foody and Hiremath are Mercor’s CEO and chief technology officer, respectively.
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