FX.co ★ Who became billionaire riding AI boom?

Michael Intrator and Partners

CoreWeave began as a crypto-mining project by former traders who bought up Nvidia graphics cards. But by 2019, they pivoted to offering cloud computing power for neural networks. Riding the AI boom, the American company quickly secured major investments, went public, and made its founders billionaires. Today, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator is worth over $3 billion. His partners — Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee, and Jack Cohen — have net worths of $2 billion, $1.5 billion, and $1.2 billion, respectively.

Alexandr Wang

American Alexandr Wang is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion. He began his IT career in Silicon Valley as a teenager, landing his first engineering roles early. At 19, Wang dropped out of MIT to focus on his own venture, Scale AI. Today, the startup plays a key role in the AI industry by providing data labeling services to giants like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

Joe Lonsdale

American entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale is a co-founder of Palantir, a company specializing in big data analysis using AI technology. Palantir works extensively with government agencies and corporations, offering tools for intelligence, cybersecurity, logistics, and healthcare. The company’s shares surged over the past year, significantly boosting Lonsdale’s personal wealth. His current net worth stands at $2 billion.

Phil Shawe

American businessman Phil Shawe, worth an estimated $1.8 billion, co-founded TransPerfect. The startup, founded in an NYU dorm room in 1992, has since grown into a global leader in language solutions. After a lengthy corporate dispute, Shawe bought out his former partner and became the sole owner of the business. Today, TransPerfect is a high-tech platform integrating AI to automate translation, localization, and data analysis. Its clients include Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yao Runhao

Chinese entrepreneur Yao Runhao, with a net worth of $1.3 billion, made his mark in the online gaming industry by combining AI technology with relationship simulation games. His Shanghai-based studio, Paper Games, launched Love and Deepspace in early 2024 — an AI-driven dating simulator that quickly became a hit and now generates over 80% of the company’s revenue. The game uses AI algorithms to create personalized interactions with virtual characters and has around 6 million monthly active users

Dario Amodei and Team

American Dario Amodei and his team have become key figures in the AI space following the meteoric rise of their startup Anthropic, the developer behind Claude, a competitor to ChatGPT. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in March 2024 at a valuation of $61.5 billion, making all seven co-founders billionaires. Dario and his sister Daniela each hold an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion, as do their partners Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Christopher Olah.

Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker

Guatemalan-born Luis von Ahn and Swiss native Severin Hacker became billionaires thanks to Duolingo — an educational platform where AI plays a central role. Founded in 2011, the company focuses on adaptive learning: AI analyzes user behavior in real time and offers personalized exercises, turning language learning into an engaging and efficient process. The app now has over 100 million monthly users learning more than 40 languages. Each founder has a net worth of approximately $1.1 billion.

Sundar Pichai

Indian-born Sundar Pichai made his debut on the billionaire list this year, thanks to the sharp rise in Alphabet’s stock — the parent company of Google, where he has served as CEO since 2019. Although he owns just 0.02% of the company, the stock’s dramatic growth, driven in part by the launch of the Gemini 2.0 AI model, significantly boosted his wealth. Combined with long-standing stock option programs and share sales, Pichai’s net worth has now reached $1.1 billion.

Liang Wenfeng

Chinese entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, with a net worth of $1 billion, emerged as a notable figure in the global AI arena following the launch of the DeepSeek model in January 2024. This language model rivals ChatGPT in quality but at a much lower cost. The project was self-funded, drawing from profits of High-Flyer Capital Management — a hedge fund focused on quantitative strategies, which Liang co-founded with two classmates back in 2015.