Meet the World’s Youngest Billionaires

Gabrielle Olya
·8 min read
©Jae C. Hong/AP/REX/Shutterstock
©Jae C. Hong/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Achieving billionaire status is no easy feat, and the latest crop of young billionaires has made it to ten-figure levels of wealth at the age of 30 or younger. Some are self-made billionaires who have struck it rich through their innovative companies — mostly in the tech space — while others have inherited their not-so-small fortunes.

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GOBankingRates used Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire tracker data to source all billionaires 30 and younger as of the end of trading on April 28, and ranked them by age. Here’s a look at the world’s youngest billionaires, ranked from oldest to youngest.

Lisa Draexlmaier

  • Age: 30

  • Net worth: $1.7 billion

  • Source of wealth: Auto parts

Lisa and her father, Fritz Draexlmaier, oversee auto parts maker Fritz Draexlmaier Holding GmbH. Although Fritz is the company’s chairman, Lisa is the sole owner, Forbes reported. Its customers include Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Land Rover, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Tesla.

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Nick Molnar

  • Age: 30

  • Net worth: $1.9 billion

  • Source of wealth: Fintech

Nick Molnar became Australia’s youngest self-made billionaire as the co-founder and co-CEO of Afterpay, a deferred payments platform that allows users to break up the cost of their purchases into interest-free installments.

Molnar advises other aspiring entrepreneurs to not be afraid to take the leap to start their own businesses: “When you rip the band-aid off and you move beyond ‘I need a corporate job’ to ‘I can create my own income,’ it’s amazing the growth you can see from a company,” he told CNBC.

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John Collison

  • Age: 30

  • Net worth: $9.5 billion

  • Source of wealth: Payments software

John Collison is the co-founder and president of Stripe, which enables businesses to process payments online. He credits his company’s success to not just having an idea, but having an actual product.

“Anyone could have come up with the idea for Stripe because you only had to talk to people who were trying to build internet businesses back then and they’d have happily talked your ear off about how frustrating it was dealing with payments,” he told The Irish Times. “The only advantage we had was we had a product that existed. Code wins arguments. It meant that people didn’t even have to believe in us. They could just look at the data and see we were on to something.”

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Evan Spiegel

  • Age: 30

  • Net worth: $11.8 billion

  • Source of wealth: Snapchat

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, has been a billionaire since the age of 25, Forbes reported. He has said that if you want to start a business, do it because you think it will make the world a better place — not because you want to get rich.

“Life is not about making money,” he told CNBC. “Life’s not about winning awards. It’s not about winning competitions or whatever. Life is really about having an impact on the world, changing the way that people experience the world, changing the way that you experience the world.”

Jonathan Kwok

  • Age: 29

  • Net worth: $2.4 billion

  • Source of wealth: Real estate

Jonathan Kwok is the younger son of the late Walter Kwok, former chairman of Hong Kong’s largest real estate developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties. Walter had been ousted from Sun Hung Kai Properties prior to his death, and started a new property development company, Empire Group Holdings. Jonathan and his brother now oversee Empire Group Holdings.

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Sam Bankman-Fried

  • Age: 29

  • Net worth: $8.7 billion

  • Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency

Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder of Alameda Research, a quantitative crypto trading firm and FTX, a crypto derivatives exchange, which is where he derives the bulk of his wealth, Forbes reported.

His advice to aspiring crypto investors is to gain an intimate understanding of the space: “There’s a lot of money to be made if you can really figure out and pinpoint when there is and isn’t a ton of edge, and when there is and isn’t a ton of actual counterparty risk,” he told BeInCrypto.

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Andy Fang

  • Age: 28

  • Net worth: $2.2 billion

  • Source of wealth: Food delivery app

Andy Fang is the co-founder of the restaurant delivery app DoorDash, which went public in December 2020, Forbes reported. Fang started the company along with two of his Stanford University classmates and believes the team they built out was key to DoorDash’s success.

“We believed that we had a really talented team, we believed that we were on to something big,” he told the Foundr Podcast. “We really believed in the impact we were having. And I think those were the motivators that really pushed us through the hard times and pushed us through when there were maybe a couple of days, a couple of weeks where we didn’t see things grow.”

Stanley Tang

  • Age: 28

  • Net worth: $2.2 billion

  • Source of wealth: Food delivery app

Stanley Tang is another of DoorDash’s founders. Prior to launching DoorDash, Tang had a number of less successful endeavors, he told Income Diary. The trick is to learn from these missteps, he said.

“Every endeavor I’ve undertaken, I’ve made a ton of mistakes and learned something new,” Tang said. “The hope is that you don’t repeat the same mistakes and take those learnings onto your next project.”

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Gustav Magnar Witzoe

  • Age: 28

  • Net worth: $4.6 billion

  • Source of wealth: Fish farming

Gustav Magnar Witzoe’s billions come from his nearly 50% stake in Salmar ASA, one of the world’s largest salmon producers, Forbes reported. His stake was given to him by his father, Gustav Witzoe, who founded the company in 1991.

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Austin Russell

  • Age: 26

  • Net worth: $2.6 billion

  • Source of wealth: Sensors

Austin Russell founded and runs the automotive sensor firm Luminar Technologies, and he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 25 when his company was listed on the Nasdaq, Forbes reported.

“You’ve got to carve some time out every day to be able to just think,” he told Forbes. “Maybe it sounds silly, but it actually makes a pretty meaningful difference if you can just pause, take a step back and just really think through not just the tactical problems of the day, but the longer-term strategic view about what you’re trying to solve for.”

Katharina Andresen

  • Age: 25

  • Net worth: $1.4 billion

  • Source of wealth: Investments

Katharina Andresen and her sister Alexandra each inherited 42% of the family-owned investment company Ferd, Forbes reported. Ferd runs hedge funds, has private equity investments and is an active investor on the Nordic stock exchange.

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Alexandra Andresen

  • Age: 24

  • Net worth: $1.4 billion

  • Source of wealth: Investments

Alexandra Andresen’s wealth is tied to her 42% stake in her family’s investment company.

Wang Zelong

  • Age: 24

  • Net worth: $1.9 billion

  • Source of wealth: Chemicals

Wang Zelong inherited a stake in CNNC Hua Yuan Titanium Dioxide Co., which produces titanium dioxide pigment — a white pigment that can be used in coatings, plastics, ink and other materials, Forbes reported.

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Kevin David Lehmann

  • Age: 18

  • Net worth: $3.3 billion

  • Source of wealth: Drugstores

Kevin David Lehmann is the world’s youngest billionaire thanks to his 50% stake in Germany’s leading drugstore chain, dm (drogerie markt), which brings in over $12 billion in annual revenue, Forbes reported. Lehmann’s father transferred ownership of his 50% stake in dm to Kevin David in 2017.

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Last updated: May 11, 2021

Methodology: In order to find the world’s youngest billionaires, GOBankingRates used Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire tracker data to source all billionaires 35 and younger as of end of trading on April 28, 2021. With these 40 billionaires isolated, GOBankingRates found each young billionaire’s: (1) name; (2) age; (3) net worth as of April 28, 2021; (4) source of income; (5) country/territory of origin; and (6) overall Forbes wealth rank. For ranking, (1) age was the first factor considered. If two billionaires had the same age then (3) net worth as of April 28, 2021 was the tiebreaker. If still even (6) overall wealth rank was the final tiebreaker. All data was collected on and up to date as of April 28, 2021.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Meet the World’s Youngest Billionaires