AI boom creates 45 new billionaires — Forbes 2026 ranking

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Publish Date: 2026-03-11 08:56:00

Forbes counted at least 86 billionaires whose fortunes are tied to the artificial intelligence industry.
Over the past year, 45 new entrepreneurs and investors were added to this list.
The combined wealth of AI billionaires is estimated at around $2.9 trillion.

In Forbes’ annual 2026 ranking, 45 new entrepreneurs appeared whose fortunes are linked to the development of artificial intelligence technologies. According to the publication’s estimates, there are at least 86 billionaires worldwide who built their wealth on AI models, infrastructure, and services.

Their combined wealth is estimated at $2.9 trillion.

The richest newcomer to the list was Surge AI founder Edwin Chen. Forbes estimates his assets at $18 billion.

“I truly think our work is so important for all AI models that without us, AGI [artificial general intelligence] simply won’t happen,” Chen said.

Chen’s photo on the cover of one of the publication’s issues. Data: Forbes.

Second place went to Liu Debin, co-founder of Chinese company Z.ai, with capital of about $9.1 billion. Rounding out the top three is Daniel Nadler, founder of OpenEvidence, which is developing an AI-powered search tool for doctors.

Wealth Built on AI Models and Infrastructure

Some new billionaires emerged thanks to companies building foundational artificial intelligence models.

Among them:

Z.ai co-founders Liu Debin and Tang Jie
MiniMax founder Yan Junjie
the creators of French startup Mistral AI — Timothée Lacroix, Guillaume Lample, and Arthur Mensch

The creators of voice platform ElevenLabs, Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, also became billionaires.

Infrastructure-layer companies played a major role in the emergence of a new class of wealthy AI entrepreneurs.

In particular, fortunes grew for developers tied to data centers and the hardware that powers them. Among them are Peter Salanki of CoreWeave, Michael Hsing…

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