Billionaires in Just Three Years, Even Without a Product
"Paper Billionaires"... The Key Question: Who Will Survive?
The New York Times (NYT) reported on December 29 (local time) that, amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom led by companies like OpenAI, the number of wealthy individuals under the age of 40 is increasing, and the time it takes for them to become billionaires has been drastically reduced.
It was confirmed that the valuations of companies such as the data labeling startup "Scale AI," AI coding startup "Cursor," AI search engine "Perplexity," recruitment platform "Mercor," humanoid robot manufacturer "Figure AI," AI research lab "Safe Superintelligence," and AI legal startup "Harvey" have all soared to the billion-dollar range.
The founders of these companies have joined the ranks of billionaires in a much shorter period than Elon Musk, the world's richest person and CEO of Tesla. Musk became a billionaire only in 2012, after founding X.com-the predecessor of PayPal-in 1999, selling PayPal, founding SpaceX, and taking Tesla public.
In contrast, it has taken as little as four months for some young AI company founders to become billionaires. Mira Murati (37), a former OpenAI executive, founded "Thinking Machines Lab" in February and reached a company valuation of 10 billion dollars (approximately 14.331 trillion won) in just four months.
Ilya Sutskever (39), also formerly of OpenAI, founded "Safe Superintelligence" in June last year. Despite not having released any products yet, the company has already been valued at 32 billion dollars.
Brett Adcock (39), who founded "Figure AI" in 2022, saw his personal net worth grow to 19.5 billion dollars within three years of founding the company. Similarly, "Perplexity," founded by Aravind Srinivas (31) in the same year, has reached a valuation of 20 billion dollars.
Only Scale AI, which received investment from Meta in June last year, can be considered an exceptional case. Scale AI, founded in 2016 by Alexander Wang (28), Meta’s Chief AI Officer (CAIO), has grown relatively quietly.
NYT assessed these emerging billionaires by saying, "Investors have been competitively raising company valuations, rapidly boosting their value in a short period of time."
Another characteristic of these new AI billionaires is their youth. Michael Truell (24), CEO of "Cursor," and his co-founders dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2022 and became billionaires within three years. Brendan Fudy (22), CEO of "Mercor," also left Georgetown University in 2023 and founded the company with his high school friends, building a company valued at 10 billion dollars.
However, there remains a significant gender imbalance. With the exception of figures like Lucy Guo (31), co-founder of Scale AI, and Mira Murati of Thinking Machines Lab, the vast majority of emerging AI billionaires are men.
Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington and a technology economy expert, said, "Just like during the early Gilded Age or the dot-com boom, this AI era is making young people extremely wealthy very quickly," adding that the AI boom has amplified the homogeneity among those participating in it.
There are also criticisms that the wealth these individuals have accumulated is merely on paper, as it is based on unrealized valuations, making them "paper billionaires."
Jai Das, a partner at Sapphire Ventures, stated, "The key question is which of these companies will survive. And among these founders, who will become a true billionaire rather than just a nominal one?" He pointed out that if these startups fail to meet expectations, their wealth could disappear in an instant.
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