Artificial intelligence is the fastest-growing source of new fortunes. Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, the companies building AI models, the chips they run on and the data they learn from have created dozens of new billionaires 1. Private investors valued Anthropic at $965 billion in May 2026, and in October 2026 it began preparing a stock-market listing 12.
Who is getting rich from AI?
Two groups. The first are chip and cloud owners: Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Lisa Su of AMD. The second are the founders of AI labs and start-ups, such as Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei of AnthropicAlexandr Wang of Scale AI and Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity 1.
How AI fortunes are made
Most AI-lab founders hold a small percentage of a very valuable private company. Forbes estimates each of Anthropic’s seven co-founders owns about 1.4% of it, enough to make each worth more than $13 billion 2. Those values are set by funding rounds, not daily share prices, so they move in large steps when a company raises money or lists its shares. Sam Altmanwho runs OpenAIis an exception: Forbes says he holds no OpenAI equity, and his fortune comes from earlier investments 1.
The people we track in AI
| Person | Company | Net worth (Forbes) |
|---|---|---|
| Jensen Huang | Nvidia | $178B (1 Nov 2026) |
| Daniela Amodei | Anthropic | $13.7B (2 Nov 2026) |
| Dario Amodei | Anthropic | $13.6B (4 Nov 2026) |
| Alexandr Wang | Scale AIMeta | $3.2B (4 Nov 2026) |
| Sam Altman | OpenAI | $3.1B (31 Oct 2026) |
| Lisa Su | AMD | $2.8B (4 Nov 2026) |
| Aravind Srinivas | Perplexity | $2.1B (1 Nov 2026) |
Trends to watch
- Listings: Anthropic’s planned IPO would put a public price on an AI lab for the first time.
- Spending: data-centre budgets at MicrosoftAlphabetAmazonMeta and Oracleand projects such as the $500 billion Stargate venture backed by SoftBank and OpenAI.
- Chips: competition between Nvidia, AMD and custom chips from the largest cloud companies.
