AI Billionaires: How the Tech Boom is Creating Wealth at Lightning Speed

The Rise of Mira Murati and Thinking Machines Lab

Mira Murati, a former OpenAI executive, launched the startup Thinking Machines Lab in February last year. The company aims to build AI systems that are more transparent, customizable, and versatile. While it has not yet released major products or services, the startup raised roughly $2 billion in seed funding. Within just six months, the company’s valuation skyrocketed to over $10 billion, instantly making Murati a billionaire with a net worth exceeding $1 billion.

The Fast Track to Billionaire Status in AI

The rise of AI has dramatically shortened the path to becoming a billionaire, especially for younger entrepreneurs. According to The New York Times on the 29th (local time), new billionaires in the AI sector have emerged within just three years since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022.

Other Notable AI Entrepreneurs

• Ilya Sutskever, 39, founded Safe Superintelligence last June. Despite not releasing any products yet, the company has already reached a valuation of $32 billion.

• Brett Adcock, 39, founder of Figure AI in 2022, saw his personal net worth soar to $19.5 billion (around 28 trillion Korean won) in just three years.

• Arvind Srinivas, 31, launched the AI search startup Perplexity in the same year, which is now valued at $20 billion.

• Legal AI company Harvey witnessed its valuation climb from $3 billion in February to $8 billion this month, boosting the net worth of founders Winston Weinberg (30) and Gabe Pereira (34).

Record Number of Young AI Billionaires

The AI revolution is also creating a record number of billionaires in their 20s. Forbes reports that 13 self-made billionaires in their twenties have emerged this year alone. Among them are the co-founders of Mercor—Surya Midha, Brendan Foody, and Alexander Wong, who previously led Meta’s Superintelligence team and founded ScaleAI. Mercor, an AI-driven recruitment platform, has achieved a valuation of nearly $100 billion this year.

Why AI Companies Are Valued So High

The New York Times noted, “Investors competitively raised company valuations, driving up enterprise values in a short period.” Forbes added, “This surge is fueled by the AI boom, which is elevating the value of AI-focused startups.”

Comparing AI Billionaires With Elon Musk

This meteoric rise of AI billionaires contrasts sharply with the path of Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and CEO of Tesla. Musk only appeared on the billionaire list in 2012, more than a decade after founding X.com (the precursor to PayPal) in 1999, selling PayPal, launching SpaceX, and taking Tesla public. It took Musk 10–15 years from starting his ventures to achieving billionaire status—a far slower trajectory compared to today’s AI entrepreneurs.