For the first time in 15 years, there are no self-made billionaires under the age of 30.
Becoming a millionaire is a rare event, especially at a young age. The average millionaire is 66, and the oldest person in this group is 102. However, there are some who have become super-rich at a very young age.
This year, the 25 youngest people on Forbes’ billionaires list are all 33 or older. Their net worth is 110 billion dollars. Some of them are self-made billionaires and have founded notable companies, like Evan Spiegel (33) with Snap, Ben Francis (31) with GymShark and Palmer Luckey (31) with Oculus VR.
However, most received a lot of support. For the first time since 2009, nearly every millionaire under 30 has acquired their wealth – a sign that the “great wealth transfer” has begun.
The youngest billionaire in the world is Livia Voigt from Brazil. She’s only 19, still a student, but is worth $1.1 billion through a minority stake in WEG, the electrical equipment manufacturer co-founded by her late grandfather. He and his older sister Dora Voigt de Asis, 26, are two of seven new faces among the 25 youngest billionaires and one of 18 heirs in the group.
The Mistry brothers, 25 and 27 years old from Ireland, are each worth $4.9 billion. They acquired a minority stake in Mumbai-based Tata Sons following the death of their father Cyrus Mistry in 2022, who died less than three months after their revered grandfather Pallonji Mistry.
These are not the only young billionaires to make the list in the last three years due to the death of their father. 19-year-old Italian Clemente Del Vecchio inherited a large stake in Essilor Luxottica, the Italian-French manufacturer of Ray-Ban, after the death of Leonardo Del Vecchio in 2022. His brothers Leonardo Maria, 28, and Luca, 222. , as well as three older siblings inherited the property. Sophie Louise Feilmann, 29, is the German heir to the Feilmann AG glass empire, which was left behind by her father, Gunther Feilmann, who died in January aged 84.
This inheritance represents the beginning of a long-awaited intergenerational transfer of wealth in aging populations around the world. In the United States, baby boomers and their predecessors (those born in 1964 or before) own $95.9 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. A total of 147.1 trillion US dollars. US$ Household Assets. Trillions are expected to change hands every year as rich seniors die and pass their fortunes on to their descendants. Billionaires like Charles Koch (88) and Bill Knight (86) are also gearing up to pass their fortunes on to their children.
Another reason why so many young billionaires are heirs: Many of the typical young self-made moguls like Bobby Murphy (35, Snap) and Mark Zuckerberg (39, Meta) are now old and not being replaced. This year’s 25 youngest includes only one new self-made billionaire: Japan’s Shunsaku Sakami, 33, a mergers and acquisitions expert whose firm M&A Research Institute Holdings uses AI to match clients. Since going public in June 2022, the stock price has risen more than 800%, putting him in the billionaire ranks.
But there is no guarantee that young millionaires will keep their wealth. Ryan Breslow became the youngest self-made billionaire last year at the age of 28. Had he not been down on his luck, he would still be one.
Almost all of the 25 youngest people on the list are richer than last year. The biggest increase was recorded by Red Bull heir Mark Matskitz, whose fortune rose to $4.9 billion, followed by Michal Strnad, who inherited defense giant Czechoslovakia Group, now worth $2.4 billion more than last year. Most of the youngest billionaires – 15 or 60% – are from Europe. Others come from Brazil, South Korea and Hong Kong (all successors) or Japan and the US (all self-made).
The youngest members of the World’s Billionaires list are those aged 33 or younger, ranked from oldest to youngest.
Evan Spiegel
3,1 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 33
Nationality: USA
Source of wealth: Snapchat
Spiegel dropped out of Stanford University in 2011 to co-found Snapchat with his fraternity brothers Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. He became a millionaire at the age of 25. Today, he and Murphy, 35, together account for about a quarter of publicly traded Snap Inc., which had sales of $4.6 billion last year. Spiegel is the company’s CEO. In 2022, he paid off the student loans of the entire graduating class at Otis College of Art and Design, where he took courses during his high school years.
John Collison
7,2 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 33
Nationality: Ireland
Source of Assets: Bark
Born the son of scientists near Limerick, he and his brother Patrick (35) sold their first startup in 2007 – eBay management software Automattic, which he co-founded with brothers Harj and Gulveer Thagar – for US$5 million. At that time, John was still in high school. However, this was just the beginning for both: after John enrolled at Harvard and then dropped out (Patrick attended neighboring MIT), they founded Stripe, a payment software whose investors included Fidelity and an Irish sovereign wealth fund for development investments. In 2016, the company was valued at $9.2 billion following a funding round, making John, at the age of 26, the world’s youngest self-billionaire at the time. An employee valuation in February valued the company at $65 billion.
Shunsaku Sakami
1,9 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 33
Nationality: Japan
Source of Wealth: M&A Brokerage
Sakami, who started his career in advertising, founded M&A Research Institute Holdings in 2018, inspired by his grandfather’s experience of closing down his real estate company because he had no heir. The company uses artificial intelligence to advise small and medium-sized businesses with aging owners without heirs. He became a billionaire in April last year thanks to the sale of shares in M&A Research Institute Holdings and a wave of M&A activity in Japan.
Jonathan Kwok
2,4 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 32
Nationality: Hong Kong
Source of Wealth: Real Estate
He and his brother Geoffrey, 38, owe their fortune to the family’s Hong Kong real estate empire. After their father Walter Kwok died in 2018 at the age of 68, they inherited his stake in Sun Hung Kai Properties and Empire Group Holdings, the region’s largest real estate developer. Jonathan now runs Empire Group Holdings with his brother and is the youngest billionaire in Hong Kong.
Mark Matschitz
39,6 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: Austria
Source of Wealth: Red Bull
He will inherit 49% of Red Bull when his father, Dietrich Matschitz, who founded the company in 1984, dies in 2022. Before his father’s death, he ran the company’s organic division, but according to a statement at the time, he believed that “you shouldn’t be an employee and a shareholder in the same company,” as Red Bull last sold $11 billion a year and sold 12.1 billion cans, 1.5 per person on Earth. Enough to consume energy drinks.
Ben Francis
1,3 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: England
Asset Source: JimShark
As a 19-year-old college student working a pizza delivery job at Pizza Hut, he co-founded the website JimShark with his friend Louis Morgan. On this platform they sold food items purchased in bulk at a small profit. When they began sewing and screen-printing fitness clothing at Francis’ parents’ home, their activewear brand was born. Morgan sold its stake to private equity firm General Atlantic in 2020 in a deal that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Francis Jimshark continues to own 70% of the company and is the CEO.
Andy Fang
1,2 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: USA
Source of Wealth: DoorDash
He and his new roommate at Stanford University, Stanley Tang, along with MBA student Tony Xu, now 39, realized that only a local Chinese restaurant and Domino’s could deliver food to start Tortash. They founded the company in 2013 while at Stanford and took it public in 2020. Fang currently leads the DoorDash engineering team called “LaunchPad.”
Michael Strenaud
4,4 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: Czech Republic
Source of Wealth: Defense Industry
His father was a small-town scrap metal dealer who began refurbishing ex-Soviet equipment at the end of the Cold War. He transformed the company into a Czechoslovak conglomerate, a defense manufacturer, with sales of $3.2 billion by 2023. Strnad has since taken over the company and is now the owner and CEO. In his spare time, Stranad collects art, sports cars and historic vehicles.
Palmer Lucky
2,3 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: USA
Asset Source: Virtual Reality, Defense Technology
The self-taught software engineer made his first fortune at age 16 when he founded a startup called Oculus VR and sold the virtual reality goggles he created. In 2014, he sold the company to Facebook in a deal valued at $2 billion. In 2017, he founded Anduril, a defense technology company that deployed drones to Ukraine. A funding round in December 2022 valued Anduril at USD 8.5 billion.
Stanley Tang
1,2 Mr. US dollar-$
Alternate: 31
Nationality: USA
Source of Wealth: DoorDash
Along with his co-founder Andy Fang, he returns to the billionaire ranks this year after a difficult year in 2022, when the company’s high net losses sent the stock price plummeting. DoorDash started 2023 with significant layoffs, but has since grown revenue by 31% to $8.6 billion and reduced net loss by 59% to $558 million in 2022. That was enough to boost shareholder confidence: DoorDash’s stock price rose 127% year over year. Tang leads Tortash Labs, the company’s robotics and automation division.
