The artificial intelligence boom is creating a new generation of young billionaires in the US. A record 10 billionaires under the age of 40 have made it to the 2026 Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people, more than double the four who made the cut last year.
Seven of the 10 are new entrants, and all seven built their fortunes through companies linked to the AI boom.
The rise comes even as the wealth needed to enter the Forbes 400 has reached a record $4.4 billion, up from $3.8 billion last year. Forbes said the higher entry bar pushed a record 590 American billionaires below the cutoff.
Four of the seven new names come from Anthropic, the AI safety-focused company behind Claude. The company was founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI employees.
All seven Anthropic cofounders are now tied at No. 75 on the overall Forbes 400 list, with each estimated to be worth $15.5 billion. Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion after raising $6.5 billion in May. Like rival OpenAI, it has also confidentially filed for a possible public listing, Forbes reported.
Here are the 10 youngest members of the 2026 Forbes 400, starting with the oldest.
Lukas Walton, 39
Net worth: $44.4 billion | Source: Walmart
Lukas Walton is the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the son of the late John Walton. According to Forbes, he inherited about one-third of his father’s estate.
Walton now runs Builders Vision, a Chicago-based investment and philanthropy firm that oversees more than $15 billion in assets across clean energy, sustainable food and ocean conservation.
In June, he also bought a minority stake in the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, according to Forbes.
Walton is the only person among the 10 youngest billionaires who inherited his wealth rather than building the fortune himself. He is also the richest person in the group.
Vlad Tenev, 39
Net worth: $7.1 billion | Source: Robinhood
Vlad Tenev was born in Bulgaria to two World Bank employees. He met Baiju Bhatt at Stanford, and the two later founded Robinhood, the zero-commission trading app, in 2013.
Robinhood went public in 2021. Tenev’s roughly 6% stake in the company remains the main source of his fortune.
According to Forbes, Robinhood’s fastest-growing business is now prediction markets, where users can trade contracts linked to elections, Federal Reserve decisions, sports and even weather.
The business generated more than $156 million in revenue last quarter, ahead of Robinhood’s stock and crypto trading businesses.
Tenev also chairs Harmonic, an AI startup he founded in 2023 that focuses on mathematical reasoning.
Tom Brown, 39
Net worth: $15.5 billion | Source: Anthropic
Tom Brown studied computer science and cognitive science at MIT. He was among OpenAI’s first 20 employees and was the lead author of the 2020 paper that introduced GPT-3.
According to Forbes, the model is widely credited with helping trigger the current wave of AI investment.
Brown left OpenAI in 2021 with six other employees to start Anthropic. He now oversees the computing infrastructure used to train Anthropic’s Claude models.
Daniela Amodei, 39
Net worth: $15.5 billion | Source: Anthropic
Daniela Amodei graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz and previously worked at Stripe. She later joined OpenAI, where she worked on safety and policy.
In 2021, she left the company with her brother Dario Amodei, who is Anthropic’s CEO, and five other OpenAI employees to start Anthropic.
Amodei is now Anthropic’s president and board chair. She oversees research, engineering, product and commercial operations.
Forbes’ broader coverage of the 2026 Forbes 400 also identifies her as the second-richest self-made woman in the US this year.
Edwin Chen, 38
Net worth: $18 billion | Source: Surge AI
Edwin Chen grew up in a small town in Florida. His parents were Taiwanese immigrants who ran a Chinese-Thai restaurant.
He studied mathematics, linguistics and computer science at MIT before working at Google, Facebook and Twitter. In 2020, Chen founded Surge AI, a company that uses human workers to label data and rate AI-generated responses used to train AI models.
Forbes said customers including Google and Anthropic have helped Surge AI push its annual revenue above $1 billion. Chen is estimated to own about 75% of the company.
Greg Brockman, 37
Net worth: $25.5 billion | Source: OpenAI
Greg Brockman left both Harvard and MIT without completing his degree. At 25, he became chief technology officer at Stripe. He later cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015.
As OpenAI’s president, Brockman oversees the company’s infrastructure. Since July, he has also taken charge of its product business, putting him effectively second-in-command as the company considers a possible IPO.
Forbes said Brockman’s roughly $20 billion stake in OpenAI was disclosed under oath during Musk’s 2024 lawsuit over the company’s move toward a for-profit structure.
That makes Brockman the richest newcomer on this year’s Forbes 400.
He also owns nearly $500 million worth of Stripe stock, along with smaller investments in chipmaker Cerebras and computing company CoreWeave.
Jack Clark, 37
Net worth: $15.5 billion | Source: Anthropic
Jack Clark previously worked as an AI reporter at Bloomberg before joining OpenAI as its policy director.
After helping found Anthropic in 2021, Clark became one of the AI industry’s prominent voices calling for government regulation, Forbes reported.
He now runs Anthropic’s in-house policy think tank and writes a widely followed newsletter on the AI industry.
Sam McCandlish, 36
Net worth: $15.5 billion | Source: Anthropic
Sam McCandlish has a PhD in theoretical physics from Stanford.
At OpenAI, he worked on “scaling laws”, which describe how AI systems improve as they are given more data and computing power, according to Forbes.
After co-founding Anthropic, McCandlish became the company’s chief technology officer. He moved to the role of chief architect in October.
He now oversees how Anthropic’s AI models are designed and trained.
Palmer Luckey, 33
Net worth: $5.9 billion | Source: Anduril
Palmer Luckey built an early virtual reality headset as a teenager. He later founded Oculus and sold the company to Facebook for $2 billion when he was 21.
He eventually left Facebook amid controversy over his political views, Forbes reported. In 2017, Luckey founded Anduril, a company that makes autonomous drones and AI-coordinated defence sensors.
According to Forbes, the US Army awarded Anduril a 10-year contract worth up to $20 billion in March. Two months later, the company raised $5 billion at a valuation of $61 billion.
Other recent reports have put Anduril’s private valuation even higher as investors continue to pour money into defence technology.
Steven Hao, 30: Youngest person on the Forbes 400
Net worth: $5.8 billion | Source: Cognition
Steven Hao is the youngest person among all 400 members of this year’s Forbes list.
Hao and his two Cognition cofounders, Scott Wu and Walden Yan, have all won gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics, the world’s top competitive programming championship. Hao won his gold medal in 2014.
Before starting Cognition, Hao worked as an engineer at Scale AI, the data-labelling company cofounded by fellow young billionaire Alex Wang. Meta now owns a 49% stake in Scale AI.
Hao left Scale AI and cofounded Cognition in 2023.
The company’s main product, Devin, is an AI agent that can write and repair computer code. Its customers include Citibank and fintech company Ramp, Forbes reported.
In September, Cognition raised $2 billion in a funding round that valued the company at $48 billion. That made all three cofounders billionaires.
However, Hao is the only one currently wealthy enough to make the Forbes 400. He is Cognition’s chief technology officer and the largest shareholder among its founders.
Forbes said Cognition is backed by investors including Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. The company has also been described as a leader in “vibe-coding” tools for developers.
Only three from last year’s list remain
Only three people from last year’s 10 youngest billionaires list remain under 40 this year: Edwin Chen, Vlad Tenev and Lukas Walton.
Together, the 10 youngest billionaires on the 2026 list are worth $169 billion. That is down from $357 billion in 2025, mainly because several members of last year’s group crossed the age of 40 and moved out of the category.
Among those who aged out this year are Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 42, who is now worth an estimated $212 billion; venture capitalist Josh Kushner, 41, with $16.7 billion; and Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk, 43, with $11.9 billion.
Forbes 400 wealth hits $8 trillion
The 400 richest Americans are worth a combined $8 trillion in 2026, up from $6.6 trillion last year. Despite the record $4.4 billion entry bar, 34 newcomers made the list, making it the third-highest year for new entrants in two decades, Forbes reported.
The figures are based on share prices as of September 4, 2026, while private-company valuations remain estimates.