Some fortunes on this list were inherited; others were built within a few years. Heirs to companies that make electric motors, medicines, eyeglasses and video games sit beside founders of artificial-intelligence start-ups. All hundred were 37 or younger when Forbes’ real-time list was captured on 12 September 2026.
The ranking is by age, not by money. Ages are calculated from the birth dates Forbes records, so a person’s place depends on a single date. The estimated net worth beside each name shows how widely the fortunes vary, from $1bn to $45bn.
Who is the youngest billionaire?
Amelie Voigt Trejes, aged 21 on 12 September 2026, with an estimated net worth of US$1.1bn, according to Forbes’ real-time list.
Families with several heirs
One family business can put several heirs on the list at once. Members of the Voigt family, heirs to the Brazilian motor maker WEG, hold three of the first ten places, and four members of the von Baumbach family, one of the families that own the drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim, also appear. Forbes often gives relatives identical estimates, so their order depends only on their birth dates.
Valuations set in funding rounds
Forbes describes 22 of the hundred fortunes as coming from artificial intelligence. Most of those companies are private, and their value is set when investors buy a small stake in a funding round, not by a stock market. A founder’s estimated wealth can therefore change sharply from one round to the next.
Ages from a single date
Each age is calculated from the birth date in Forbes’ data on the day it was captured. Some of those dates fall on 1 January, which often means only the year of birth is known; for those people the age shown may be a year too high. Billionaires without a published birth date are not included.
What this snapshot shows
Amelie Voigt Trejes is the youngest person in this captured list, at 21. The entry at number 100, Jack Clark, is 37. Of the hundred, 32 were under 30. The largest fortune among them, Mark Mateschitz’s US$45.04bn, is 11.9% of the US$377.02bn the hundred hold together, by Forbes’ estimates.
The first ten
Amelie Voigt Trejes
Source of wealth: Industrial machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.1bn ·
Amelie Voigt Trejes’s net worth is about US$1.1bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
WEG was founded on 16 September 1961 by Werner Ricardo Voigt, Eggon João da Silva and Geraldo Werninghaus. Its name is formed from their first initials. Forbes Brasil says Amelie Voigt Trejes, Voigt’s granddaughter, shares part of her mother Cladis Voigt Trejes’s WEG stake with her brothers.
She holds no management post or board seat. Money Times puts her direct and indirect holdings at about 2.54 per cent of WEG. The heirs also belong to WPA, a family holding company that owns just over half of WEG.
Johannes von Baumbach
Source of wealth: Pharma · Estimated net worth: US$6.5bn ·
Johannes von Baumbach’s net worth is about US$6.5bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Albert Boehringer bought a small tartar factory in Ingelheim am Rhein in 1885. Forbes lists Johannes von Baumbach and his three older siblings with equal stakes; their uncle, Hubertus von Baumbach, then ran the company.
Unlike most large drug makers, Boehringer Ingelheim is private, wholly owned by the Boehringer, Liebrecht and von Baumbach families. Their shareholders’ committee, the group’s highest supervisory body, has been chaired by Hubertus von Baumbach since July 2025. The company reported net sales of €27.8 billion in 2025.
Lívia Voigt de Assis
Source of wealth: Industrial Machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.4bn ·
Lívia Voigt de Assis’s net worth is about US$1.4bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Lívia Voigt de Assis is a granddaughter of Werner Ricardo Voigt, one of WEG’s founders. According to Forbes Brasil, she inherited part of the WEG shares held by her mother, Valsi Voigt. In the 1970s WEG created a governance structure to keep its many heirs aligned.
Lívia and her sister, Dora, together hold about 3.1 per cent of WEG, Money Times reports. The founding families pool shares in WPA, a holding company with its own family council.
Clemente Del Vecchio
Source of wealth: Eyeglasses · Estimated net worth: US$5.5bn ·
Clemente Del Vecchio’s net worth is about US$5.5bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Leonardo Del Vecchio founded Luxottica in Agordo in 1961. It later merged with France’s Essilor to form EssilorLuxottica. When he died in 2022, his will divided Delfin, the family holding company, equally among eight heirs, among them his son Clemente.
Delfin is EssilorLuxottica’s largest shareholder, with about 32 per cent, and also owns stakes in Italian financial groups. Each heir received 12.5 per cent of Delfin, and big decisions need near-unanimity among them.
Kim Jung-youn
Source of wealth: Online gaming · Estimated net worth: US$1.7bn ·
Kim Jung-youn’s net worth is about US$1.7bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Kim Jung-ju founded the game developer Nexon in 1994 and in 2009 placed his family’s majority holding in NXC. When he died in 2022, his wife and two daughters inherited all his NXC shares. Kim Jung-youn received 30.78 per cent, as did her sister.
To pay inheritance tax, the two daughters handed 29.3 per cent of NXC to the state in 2023, which cut each one’s stake to 16.81 per cent at the time. NXC controls about 46 per cent of Tokyo-listed Nexon.
Surya Midha
Source of wealth: AI Software · Estimated net worth: US$2.2bn ·
Surya Midha’s net worth is about US$2.2bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
At Bellarmine College Preparatory, Surya Midha says, he and his partner became the first team to win all three national policy-debate tournaments. He had met Adarsh Hiremath at debate contests as a child and Brendan Foody through high-school debate. In 2023 he took leave from Georgetown University to co-found Mercor with them.
Midha is Mercor’s board chairman; Forbes estimates each founder holds about 22 per cent. Mercor first matched engineers in India with US firms before supplying experts to train AI models. An October 2025 funding round valued it at $10 billion.
Brendan Foody
Source of wealth: AI Software · Estimated net worth: US$2.2bn ·
Brendan Foody’s net worth is about US$2.2bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Brendan Foody met his two Mercor co-founders through high-school debate in the Bay Area. Fortune says the idea took shape at a São Paulo hackathon and that he left Georgetown University to pursue it. They founded Mercor in 2023 as a recruiting platform.
Under Foody, its chief executive, Mercor shifted to supplying scientists, doctors and lawyers to train AI models. In July 2026 Bloomberg reported talks at a $20 billion valuation, double that of its October 2025 round.
Adarsh Hiremath
Source of wealth: AI Software · Estimated net worth: US$2.2bn ·
Adarsh Hiremath’s net worth is about US$2.2bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Adarsh Hiremath studied at Harvard, where he did research for the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, who later invested in Mercor. He left after his second year to concentrate on Mercor, founded in January 2023 with Brendan Foody and Surya Midha. He became a Thiel Fellow in 2024.
Hiremath is the company’s chief technology officer. In October 2025 Mercor said it had more than 30,000 experts on its roster. That month a $350 million funding round valued it at $10 billion, five times its previous valuation.
Kevin David Lehmann
Source of wealth: Drugstores · Estimated net worth: US$4.3bn ·
Kevin David Lehmann’s net worth is about US$4.3bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
Götz Werner opened the first dm drugstore in Karlsruhe in 1973. In November 1974 he brought in Günther Lehmann, from the family that owned the Pfannkuch grocery chain, as a backer in exchange for half the shares. In 2016 Lehmann transferred his stake to his son, Kevin David.
Since 2010 the other half has belonged to the charitable dm-Werner-Stiftung. Like his father, Lehmann has no role in running the business. In its 2024/25 financial year, dm’s sales across Europe rose 8.2 per cent to €19.2 billion.
Pedro Voigt Trejes
Source of wealth: Industrial machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.1bn ·
Pedro Voigt Trejes’s net worth is about US$1.1bn, according to Forbes’ estimate captured on 12 September 2026.
WEG first made electric motors, then branched out in the 1980s into automation, transformers, paints and varnishes. Forbes Brasil says Pedro Voigt Trejes and his brother Felipe received part of their WEG shares through a transfer from their mother, Cladis Voigt Trejes.
WEG now has 67 manufacturing sites in 18 countries and calls itself the world’s largest maker of low-voltage industrial motors. Products launched in the previous five years made up just over half of its 2025 revenue, the company says.
The ranking continues: 11–100
Forbes · ranking and methodology
Felipe Voigt Trejes
Source of wealth: Industrial machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.1bnView record ↗Age: 24 years- Age: 24 years
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Carl-Anton Kunz
Source of wealth: Plumbing and heating supplies · Estimated net worth: US$1.1bnView record ↗Age: 27 years- Age: 28 years
- Age: 28 years
Dora Voigt de Assis
Source of wealth: Industrial Machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.4bnView record ↗Age: 28 years- Age: 29 years
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Max Van Hoegaerden Herrmann Telles
Source of wealth: Beer · Estimated net worth: US$7.1bnView record ↗Age: 30 years- Age: 31 years
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Aravind Srinivas
Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence · Estimated net worth: US$2.1bnView record ↗Age: 32 years- Age: 32 years
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Palmer Luckey
Source of wealth: Virtual reality, defense technology · Estimated net worth: US$5.9bnView record ↗Age: 33 years- Age: 34 years
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Christopher Olah
Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence · Estimated net worth: US$15.5bnView record ↗Age: 34 years- Age: 34 years
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Timothée Lacroix
Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence · Estimated net worth: US$1.8bnView record ↗Age: 35 years- Age: 35 years
- Age: 35 years
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Guillaume Lample
Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence · Estimated net worth: US$1.8bnView record ↗Age: 35 years- Age: 36 years
- Age: 36 years
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Sam McCandlish
Source of wealth: Artificial intelligence · Estimated net worth: US$15.5bnView record ↗Age: 36 years- Age: 36 years
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- Age: 36 years
Eduardo Voigt Schwartz
Source of wealth: Industrial Machinery · Estimated net worth: US$1.8bnView record ↗Age: 36 years- Age: 36 years
- Age: 36 years
Ludwig Theodor Braun
Source of wealth: Medical technology · Estimated net worth: US$1.7bnView record ↗Age: 36 years- Age: 36 years
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There is always a story.
The youngest billionaires are a mix of heirs who received stakes early and founders whose companies were valued highly within a few years. The ages and estimates here describe 12 September 2026; private valuations can move sharply before the next birthday.