More than 50 people will become AI billionaires in 2025

In 2023 and 2024, we were drowned in chatter about how tech companies were going to create an AI model so big that it would wipe out and/or save humanity. By 2025, the volume of “AGI” has been turned down and the apocalyptic hype has turned into incredible amounts of money. Some of this money was concentrated in the personal records of AI startup founders, who discovered that they were the proud owners of stakes worth ten figures.

According to Forbes, this happened more than 50 times in 2025. Humanity now has more than 50 new AI billionaires.

As you may have noticed, the blessed title of billionaire was not bestowed upon the creators of the digital messiah. For the most part, the unicorns of the AI ​​billionaire era are dreary SaaS companies, data labeling startups, or companies that promise to replace workers with their economical AI “agents.” For example, congratulate Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, the new billionaires who achieved this by founding a startup called Sierra that replaces human customer service representatives with AI agents.

There are exceptions to this rule of boredom. For example, Polish founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski became billionaires thanks to the success of ElevenLabs, whose entertainment-adjacent voice generation tools have gained backers like Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine.

Lucy Guo is the co-founder of a dreary SaaS AI company called Scale AI that annotates data, but her story is funnier than most because she briefly became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire after Meta bought a significant stake in her company. The detail that may have caught your attention is the fact that she “took down” Taylor Swift as the holder of this title. Then in December, the crown was snatched by Luana Lopes-Laraco-founder of the equally dreary non-AI startup Kalshi.

Also, Brendan Foody, Adarsh ​​​​Hiremath and Surya Midha, the three Thiel Fellows who founded Mercor, a company that mass recruits experts and converts their expertise into AI training, are notable because they were all 22 when they became billionaires. This means they broke the age record held by Mark Zuckerberg.

By traditional measures, the economy is, of course, boomingin case you didn’t know. Despite this, 75% of American households are deemed unaffordable based on average income in the United States. And only 24% of house and condo sales for 2024, the last year with relevant data, were purchased by first time home buyers— a sharp drop compared to 50% in 2010. In addition, the 10% of richest employees currently account for around 50 percent of all consumer spending.

But I’m sure none of that is relevant. Congratulations to the Class of 2025 AI Billionaires! This party will definitely never end.