Meet the richest AI billionaires turning smart tech into billion-dollar fortunes including Sam Altman, Jensen Huang and more
The growth of AI has also created a new class of billionaires, some of whom have built companies from scratch, while others have pivoted established businesses toward AI-driven opportunities. Backed by massive investments from Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and other global players, these individuals represent the cutting edge of technology and entrepreneurship. From Jensen Huang's hardware empire to Alexandr Wang's data infrastructure solutions, and from Sam Altman's AI innovation to Yao Runhao's virtual gaming platforms, these billionaires illustrate how AI is reshaping industries and redefining entrepreneurship.
List of richest AI billionaires
Rank
Name
Net Worth (USD)
Company / Role
Key Contribution
1
Jensen Huang
$113 Billion
Nvidia (CEO)
Hardware powering AI models
2
Alexandr Wang
$2.7 Billion
Scale AI (CEO)
Data labeling for AI training
3
Sam Altman
$1.9 Billion
OpenAI (CEO)
Generative AI leadership
4
Phil Shawe
$1.8 Billion
TransPerfect (Co-CEO)
AI-driven translation services
5
Dario Amodei
$1.2 Billion
Anthropic (CEO)
Ethical AI model development
6
Liang Wenfeng
$1.0 Billion
DeepSeek (CEO)
Cost-effective AI innovation
7
Yao Runhao
$1.3 Billion
Paper Games (CEO)
AI-powered gaming experiences
Source: Forbes
World's wealthiest AI moguls ranked
Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, sits at the top of the AI billionaire list with an astonishing $113 billion (£151 billion) net worth. Nvidia initially focused on advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming and professional visualization. However, as AI adoption accelerated, these GPUs became the standard for training and running large language models like ChatGPT and Meta AI.
Huang's strategic vision transformed Nvidia into the backbone of the AI industry. In July 2025, the company reached an unprecedented $4 trillion valuation, reflecting how central its hardware is to AI infrastructure. Owning 3% of Nvidia, Huang's wealth grew by over 300% in just one year, making him one of the top 20 richest individuals worldwide.
Alexandr Wang
At just 26 years old, Alexandr Wang has secured his place as the youngest self-made billionaire in the AI sector. He founded Scale AI at the age of 19, after dropping out of MIT, to focus on providing data labeling and annotation services essential for AI training.
Scale AI works with over 300 high-profile clients, including Meta, Google, and General Motors, supplying the data infrastructure required to build machine learning models. The company's valuation reached $14 billion (£10.5 billion) in 2024, and Wang's 14% ownership stake boosted his net worth to $2.7 billion (£3.6 billion). His success highlights how even niche AI services can yield massive fortunes.
Sam Altman
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is one of the most prominent faces in artificial intelligence. While OpenAI itself is valued at around $300 billion (£225 billion), Altman does not personally hold equity in the company. His wealth, estimated at $1.9 billion (£1.4 billion), stems from early investments in companies like Stripe, Reddit, and Helion Energy, combined with the success of his previous startup, Loopt, which he sold for $42 million in 2012.
Altman's leadership at OpenAI popularized generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, setting global trends in how businesses and consumers interact with AI. His influence extends beyond wealth, positioning him as one of the key thought leaders shaping AI's future.
Phil Shawe
Phil Shawe, co-CEO of TransPerfect, built one of the world's largest translation and localization companies by leveraging AI-powered language processing. TransPerfect offers services across industries like law, healthcare, gaming, and entertainment, helping businesses operate in multiple languages with enhanced accuracy and efficiency.
Founded in 1992 from a dorm room at New York University, TransPerfect generated $1.3 billion (£976 million) in revenue in 2024. Shawe owns 99% of the company, securing a personal fortune of $1.8 billion (£1.3 billion). His journey shows how AI technology can transform even traditional industries like language services into billion-dollar enterprises.
Dario Amodei
Dario Amodei, a former vice president of research at OpenAI, left to co-found Anthropic in 2021. His company focuses on building safe, reliable AI systems using reinforcement learning techniques that allow AI models to adapt through human feedback.
Anthropic's approach to ethical AI and safety-first principles resonated with investors and industry leaders, pushing the company's valuation to $61.5 billion (£46.2 billion) by 2025. Amodei's net worth has reached $1.2 billion (£901 million), proving that prioritizing responsibility in AI development can be both impactful and profitable.
Liang Wenfeng
Liang Wenfeng, once largely unknown outside China, made headlines with DeepSeek-R1, a large language model that outperformed ChatGPT on certain benchmarks while being five times cheaper to run. This innovation shook global markets, causing Nvidia's stock to drop 17% in a single day as investors reacted to the potential shift in AI computing costs.
Wenfeng previously founded a successful hedge fund, and he used his financial expertise to build DeepSeek into one of the most cost-efficient AI providers globally. His net worth now stands at $1 billion (£751 million), making him a key figure in China's growing AI industry.
Yao Runhao
Yao Runhao, CEO of Paper Games, has carved out a unique niche by combining AI with gaming. His company's hit product, Love and Deepspace, uses artificial intelligence to create virtual dating simulations with interactive, personalized storylines.
The game attracts over six million monthly users, showcasing the demand for AI-driven entertainment. Paper Games employs around 2,000 staff and focuses primarily on the female gaming market in China, highlighting how AI is revolutionizing interactive leisure experiences. Runhao's innovation has earned him a net worth of $1.3 billion (£977 million).
Also Read |
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez spotted with Leonardo DiCaprio on $485 million superyacht after luxurious Venice wedding
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
17 minutes ago
- NDTV
US To Impose 100% Tariff On Semiconductor Imports, Says Trump
Washington: President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose a 100% tariff on computer chips, likely raising the cost of electronics, autos, household appliances and other goods deemed essential for the digital age. "We'll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors," Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. "But if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge." The Republican president said companies that make computer chips in the U.S. would be spared the import tax. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to an overall uptick in inflation. Inquiries sent to chip makers Nvidia and Intel were not immediately answered. Demand for computer chips has been climbing worldwide, with sales increasing 19.6% in the year-ended in June, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization. Trump's tariff threats mark a significant break from existing plans to revive computer chip production in the United States. He is choosing an approach that favors the proverbial stick over carrots in order to incentivize more production. Essentially, the president is betting that higher chip costs would force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up prices for mobile phones, TVs and refrigerators. By contrast, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act signed into law in 2022 by then-President Joe Biden provided more than $50 billion to support new computer chip plants, fund research and train workers for the industry. The mix of funding support, tax credits and other financial incentives were meant to draw in private investment, a strategy that Trump has vocally opposed.
NDTV
3 hours ago
- NDTV
WhatsApp Launches New Safety Tool, 6.8 Million Scam Centre Accounts Banned
New Delhi: WhatsApp has launched a new 'safety overview', which will alert a user when someone not in their contact list adds them to a new WhatsApp group that they may not recognise, as Meta's messaging platform intensified its crackdown on scams and fraud. The safety overview will contain key information about the said group and tips to stay safe, it said. "From there, you can exit the group without ever having to look at the chat. And if you think you might recognise the group after seeing the safety overview, you can choose to see the chat for more context," according to WhatsApp. And notifications from the group will be silenced until the user marks that they do wish to stay. Meta's messaging platform further said it is exploring ways to caution users when they start a chat with someone not in their contacts by showing more context about the person they are messaging. This, it hopes, will enable informed decisions. WhatsApp said it also takes down attempts by criminal scam centres, often fuelled by forced labour and operated by organised crime, primarily in South East Asia. In the first six months this year, as part of its efforts to protect people from scams, WhatsApp and Meta's security teams detected and banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centres. "Based on our investigative insights into the latest enforcement efforts, we proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centres were able to operationalise them," it said. Citing an instance of such a crackdown, it said recently, WhatsApp, Meta, and OpenAI disrupted scamsters' efforts that had links to a criminal scam centre in Cambodia. These attempts ranged from offering payments for fake likes to enlisting others into a rent-a-scooter pyramid scheme or luring people to invest in cryptocurrency. "As OpenAI reported, the scammers used ChatGPT to generate the initial text message containing a link to a WhatsApp chat, and then quickly directed the target to Telegram, where they were assigned a task of liking videos on TikTok. The scammers attempted to build trust in their scheme by sharing how much the target has already 'earned' in theory, before asking them to deposit money into a crypto account as the next task," it said.
Deccan Herald
4 hours ago
- Deccan Herald
OpenAI eyes $500 bn valuation in potential employee share sale
ChatGPT maker OpenAI is in early-stage discussions about a stock sale that would allow employees to cash out and could value the company at about $500 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. That would represent an eye-popping bump-up from its current valuation of $300 billion, with the sale underscoring both OpenAI's rapid gains in users and revenue as well as the intense competition among artificial intelligence firms to secure talented workers. The transaction, which would come before a potential IPO, would allow current and former employees to sell several billion dollars worth of shares, said the source, who requested anonymity because the talks are private. Bolstered by its flagship product ChatGPT, OpenAI doubled its revenue in the first seven months of the year, reaching an annualised run rate of $12 billion, and is on track to reach $20 billion by year-end, the source added. Microsoft-backed OpenAI has about 700 million weekly active users for its ChatGPT products, a surge from about 400 million in February. The share sale talks come on the heels of OpenAI's primary funding round announced earlier this year, which aims to raise $40 billion, led by Japan's SoftBank Group. SoftBank has until the end of the year to fund its $22.5 billion portion of the round, but the remainder has been subscribed at a valuation of $300 billion, the source said. Microsoft-backed OpenAI has about 700 million weekly active users for its ChatGPT products, a surge from about 400 million in February.
