According to Forbes, the current AI market is experiencing a bubble, which continues to expand. In january, Elon Musk's SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal valued at approximately 250 billion USD. One month later, Anthropic raised capital at a valuation of 380 billion USD.
In late february, billionaire Sam Altman's OpenAI announced commitments for 110 billion USD in funding. This boosted the valuation of the company, which develops and operates ChatGPT, to 840 billion USD.
Even businesses with almost no revenue or commercial products in the AI sector are being valued at tens of billions of USD. This surge brings substantial profits to the founders, leaders, and investors behind these artificial intelligence companies.
On the 2026 billionaire rankings, Forbes reports that the world has 86 AI billionaires, with 45 new entrants in the past year. Globally, AI billionaires possess an estimated combined wealth of 2.9 trillion USD.
Among the new AI billionaires, Surge AI founder Edwin Chen is the wealthiest, with an estimated fortune of 18 billion USD. Surge AI does not surpass competitors in data labeling and AI training. However, because Chen did not accept funding from venture capital firms, he still holds over 75% of the company's shares.
Immediately following Edwin Chen is Liu Debing (with an estimated fortune of 9,1 billion USD), co-founder and chairman of the Chinese AI company Z.ai. This entity develops open AI models that compete with OpenAI. Debing became a billionaire after Z.ai's explosive IPO in Hong Kong in january.
Standing 'thu ba' among the newcomers is Daniel Nadler (7,6 billion USD), founder of OpenEvidence, a company developing an AI search tool for doctors.
10 new billionaires entered the list this year thanks to companies supporting AI programming or AI application software businesses. This group includes the co-founders of Cursor, Lovable, Sierra, Harness, and Cognition.
Others grew wealthy by building infrastructure for AI, including new data center billionaires such as Peter Salanki of CoreWeave, Michael Hsing of Monolithic Power Systems, and Toby Neugebauer of Fermi America.
For technology billionaires, Forbes reports 468 individuals this year (including AI billionaires). This group currently holds assets totaling approximately 4.8 trillion USD, an increase of 1.1 trillion USD compared to one year ago.
Most of this increase comes from Elon Musk, as the world's wealthiest person added nearly 500 billion USD to his fortune. Musk's wealth surged due to the enormous valuation of the SpaceX merger with xAI.
The fortunes of Google's two co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, increased by 113 billion USD and 99 billion USD respectively. Over the past period, with its Gemini model, Google has gradually regained its position in the artificial intelligence race.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also added 55,3 billion USD as shares of the AI chip manufacturer Nvidia continued to rise sharply.
Tu Anh (according to Forbes)
