He is 75 and has recently promoted his children to key roles in the business. Arnault has an estimated fortune of $233bn, a 10% increase on last year. The 25 youngest people on the Forbes’ World’s Youngest Billionaires of 2024 list are all 33 or younger and worth $110 billion together. Some are self-made, but for the first time in more than 15 years, every billionaire under 30 inherited their fortune.
He inherited top 10 youngest billionaires in the world his wealth when his father died in a 2021 helicopter accident at age 69. The bulk of his fortune comes from an estimated 2.5% stake in the French software company Dassault Systèmes and an estimated 4.1% stake in Dassault Aviation. His great-grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, laid the foundations for the family fortune when he invented an airplane propeller the French used in the First World War. She and her sister Livia are the youngest granddaughters of Werner Ricardo Voigt, the billionaire cofounder of the Brazilian electrical equipment producer WEG, who died in 2016. They each own 3.1% of WEG, slightly less than the 3.9% stakes owned by their older cousins Eduardo and Mariana.
Kevin David Lehmann possesses a 50 percent ownership stake in Germany’s drugstore chain, dm (Drogerie Markt), with an annual revenue of around $14 billion. The company’s origins can be traced back to 1973 when Goetz Werner established its first store in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1974, Kevin David Lehmann’s father, Guenther, who managed the family’s Pfannkuch grocery chain, invested in dm.
In 2022, when he came into his family’s money, he was only 18 years old. Creating a startup isn’t the exclusive territory of new entrepreneurs or young people with moneymaking ideas. Big technological companies and their CEOs have recognized how to spot potential in emerging companies, buying them outright or overseeing the development of their growth potential. From Clemente Del Vecchio to Alexandra Andresen, know who are the billionaires in the list. We’ve highlighted the 14 billionaires under the age of 30 here. He and his Stanford freshman dormmate Stanley Tang teamed up with MBA student Tony Xu (now 39) to launch DoorDash after noticing that the only food delivery options in the area were a local Chinese joint and Domino’s.
Dora Voigt d Assis is the older sister of Livia Voigt de Assis, the youngest billionaire on this list. She is also one of the largest individual shareholders of WEG, the largest manufacturer of electrical motors in Latin America. Like her sister, she doesn’t hold any executive position at WEG. The Dassault family owns several vineyards, a private aeronautic company, and daily news publisher Le Figaro. The company, based in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, produces medicines to treat conditions including diabetes, infections, tumours and diseases of the nervous system. And a key chapter is about how Chinese billionaires are equipping their children with the knowledge and skills to take over their family business at the top of the country’s economy.
R.J. Scaringe, Rivian founder and CEO
When Günther Fielmann passed away, he left most of his money to his children. Although Sophie has no role in the eyeglasses company, she still owns about a third of its stock and is worth an estimated $2.7 billion at age 29. Luca Del Vecchio is among the six offspring of the late Leonardo Del Vecchio. Following his father’s demise, Luca, like his brother, Clemente, inherited a 12.5 percent stake in the Luxembourg-based holding company Delfin. Delfin’s extensive portfolio encompasses EssilorLuxottica holdings, shares in insurer Generali, banks such as Mediobanca and UniCredit, and the real estate developer Covivio. Unlike his brother Clemente, Luca is the chief strategy officer and actively engages in the company’s affairs.
- Firoz and his brother Zahan are the richest of the billionaires under 30, thanks primarily to their 4.6% stakes in Tata Sons, the Indian conglomerate that owns 29 public companies.
- They’ve taken an active role on making strategic investments in various sectors, including personal finance and technology.
- When Günther Fielmann passed away, he left most of his money to his children.
- There are no self-made billionaires under the age of 30 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest, for the first time in 15 years.
- The prevalence of inherited wealth in the ranks of young billionaires underscores how family legacies and privilege play a major role in attaining such extraordinary financial milestones.
- Arnault has an estimated fortune of $233bn, a 10% increase on last year.
Where did the heirs of Chinese billionaires go to uni?
Closing our list is Patrick Collison, who shares the same spot in Forbes’ list thanks to his $1 billion net worth. Patrick and John were 19 and 17 years old, respectively, at the time of the sale. Collison is one of the few billionaires in this list that entirely owes his fortune to his own efforts. This 27 year-old Irish national is the chairman of Stripe, a payments platform that he co-founded with his brother Patrick. Dora and her sister Livia are the youngest granddaughters of Werner Ricardo Voigt, the billionaire cofounder of WEG, who died in 2016.
*SELF-MADE FORTUNES ARE MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK.
What have they done to amass their fortunes at such a young age? Listed here are the youngest billionaires in the world – of varying fortune – and their accomplishments. As a result of the market crash caused by the Dot-com bubble, 83 billionaires dropped off the list from the previous year.
- For example, in 2017 he invested in Gobiand, the Norwegian Snapchat competitor and in Key Butler, an online service that helps owners rent their homes on Airbnb.
- These young billionaires are leveraging their inherited assets and making strategic investments to expand their influence and continue growing their business interests.
- Charles Koch, the elder of the US billionaire industrialist brothers, is 88.
- These inheritances illustrate the beginning of a long-anticipated generational wealth transfer among aging populations around the world.
Nexon’s hit role-playing video game MapleStory, released in 2003, helped popularize the free-to-play model whereby users paid only for cosmetic, nonessential accessories for their characters. When Günther Fielmann, the entrepreneur known for bringing cheap eyeglasses to Germany, died in January at the age of 84, he left much of his fortune to his two children, Sophie and Marc. While Marc, age 34, has helmed Fielmann AG since 2019, Sophie has no role in the eyeglasses company but still owns about a third of its stock. Kim Jung-youn and her older sister, Jung-min, hold approximately 18 percent of NXC, the largest online gaming company Nexon shareholder.
Young Billionaires: Unveiling the Top 10 Richest Kids in the World
She and her sister hold 9% stakes in game developer Nexon, mostly through the holding company NXC as well as another called Wise Kids. Those assets, plus millions in dividends, make up the bulk of their fortunes. They paid a hefty inheritance tax after their father’s 2022 death in the form of NXC shares that gave the government a 29.3% stake in the company. He and his brother Geoffrey, 38, owe their fortunes to the family’s Hong Kong real estate empire. Jonathan now runs Empire Group Holdings with his brother and is the youngest billionaire in Hong Kong.
Clemente Del Vecchio
A 27-year-old Duncan became a billionaire in 2010, following the death of his father, Texas oil tycoon Dan Duncan. He and his three siblings each inherited stakes in the Houston-based energy company Enterprise Products, which owns natural gas processing plants and over 50,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines. Duncan’s 63-year-old sister, Randa Duncan Williams, is the only sibling involved in the company; she serves as non-executive chairman. The number of under-40 members on the list continues to dwindle, down from four last year and ten in 2022. Some of the list’s youngsters, like Zuckerberg and Moskovitz, are simply just getting older.