Building a fortune usually takes a long time—even many years or a whole lifetime. The numbers show this clearly: Almost 75% of the world’s billionaires are between 50 and 79 years old. Only 12% are younger than 50. It’s rare for someone to become a billionaire before they turn 30.8
Not surprisingly, all but two of these young billionaires inherited their money. For example, the world’s youngest billionaire, 19-year-old Johannes von Baumbach, inherited his wealth from Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim, the biggest privately owned medicine company. He and his three siblings, who are 23, 25, and 27 years old, each own about $5.4 billion because of their shares in the company.
Most of the young billionaires—15 of them—are from Europe. Germany has the most, including the four von Baumbach siblings. Other young German billionaires are Sophie Luise Fielmann (30, from the eyeglasses business), Kevin David Lehmann (22, from drugstores), and Maxim Tebar (23, from a chainsaw company).
Italy comes next, with three Del Vecchio brothers who inherited part of the eyeglass company EssilorLuxottica. Their wealth jumped by 40% this year to $6.6 billion each, thanks to the company’s rising stock price after strong profits in 2024.
There are only two young billionaires on the list who made their own money.
One is Ed Craven from Australia, age 29. He co-founded Stake.com, which is believed to be the world’s biggest online casino that uses cryptocurrency. The company made $4.7 billion in revenue last year.
The other is Alexandr Wang from the U.S., age 28. He co-founded Scale AI, a company that helps train artificial intelligence by organizing data. He first became a billionaire in 2021 when Scale AI was valued at $7.3 billion. But he dropped off the Forbes list in 2023, when many tech companies lost value. Now, he’s back on the list after a new round of funding in May pushed Scale AI’s value up to $13.8 billion.
The 20 Youngest Billionaires in the World: All Aged 30 or Under, Ranked by Age
Sophie Luise Fielmann
Age: 30 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Optometry | Net Worth: $2.8 Billion
Sophie and her older brother Marc inherited most of their father Günther Fielmann’s wealth after he passed away last year. He started the company Fielmann AG in 1972 to make eyeglasses more affordable in Germany. Marc began helping run the company with their father in 2018 and took complete control in 2019. Sophie owns one-third of the company’s shares, but she doesn’t work there.
Katharina Andresen
Age: 29 | Citizenship: Norway | Source of Wealth: Investments | Net Worth: $2 Billion
Andresen’s wealth comes from her family’s old cigarette business, which her father sold in 2005. After that, the family focused on their investment company, Ferd, which invests in things like real estate, finance, and private companies in the Nordic region. Like her sister, she owns 42% of Ferd and is on the company’s board. She also supports LGBTQ+ rights and helps as an advisor for Oslo Pride.
Ed Craven*
Age: 29 | Citizenship: Australia | Source of Wealth: Online casino | Net Worth: $2.8 Billion
Craven and Bijan Tehrani started the online casino Stake.com, which made $4.7 billion last year—even though crypto gambling isn’t allowed in places like the UK, U.S., and parts of Europe. Stake became very popular during the pandemic, partly because live streamers started recording themselves playing on the site. Today, the company says it handles about 2% to 4% of all Bitcoin transactions.
Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio
Age: 29 | Citizenship: Italy | Source of Wealth: Eyeglasses | Net Worth: $6.6 Billion
After his father passed away in 2022, Del Vecchio, along with his six half-siblings and his mother, each inherited 12.5% of the family’s holding company. This company owns almost one-third of EssilorLuxottica, the world’s most significant eyeglasses business. Del Vecchio now works as the chief strategy officer of EssilorLuxottica and is also the president of the famous sunglasses brand Ray-Ban.
Alexandra Andresen
Age: 28 | Citizenship: Norway | Source of Wealth: Investments | Net Worth: $1.9 Billion
Andresen, like her sister, is on the board of the investment company Ferd, which is based in Bærum, a suburb of Oslo. She also owns 42% of the company. She used to be a top dressage rider and won the junior Norwegian championship three times, but she had to stop competing because of spinal health issues. However, she’s still very involved with horses and owns and runs a horse-breeding stable called Andresen Dressage in Oslo.
Firoz Mistry
Age: 28 | Citizenship: Ireland | Source of Wealth: Diversified | Net Worth: $4 Billion
He and his brother (mentioned below) each inherited a 4.6% share in Tata Sons, a huge company based in Mumbai that made $165 billion in revenue. They got their shares after their father died in a car accident in 2022. Tata Sons owns 30 different companies that do everything from making cars to selling jewellery. The company was started in 1868 and now operates in over 100 countries across six continents.
Alexandr Wang*
Age: 28 | Citizenship: United States | Source of Wealth: AI | Net Worth: $2 Billion
Wang is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, thanks to his company Scale AI. In May, the company raised $1 billion and is now valued at $13.8 billion. Forbes estimates that Wang owns 14% of it. Scale AI organizes and labels data that’s used to train artificial intelligence, like the kind used in ChatGPT and self-driving cars. He started the company in 2016 with Lucy Guo after dropping out of MIT during his first year. Today, big companies like Microsoft, General Motors, and Meta are Scale’s customers.
Dora Voigt de Assis
Age: 27 | Citizenship: Brazil | Source of Wealth: Industrial Machinery | Net Worth: $1.2 Billion
She and her sister (mentioned below) each own 3.1% of WEG, a Brazilian company that makes electrical motors. Their late grandfather, Werner Ricardo Voigt, started the company in 1961. The sisters don’t work at WEG, which produces over 21 million electric motors every year and sells them to more than 135 countries.
Maximilian von Baumbach
Age: 27 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Pharma | Net Worth: $5.4 Billion
Although its heirs are some of the youngest billionaires in the world, the German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim is very old. It was started in 1885, and its business history goes back even further to 1817. The company is connected to four young billionaires on this list. Maximilian is the oldest of these siblings, and his brothers and sisters are listed below.
Zahan Mistry
Age: 26 | Citizenship: Ireland | Source of Wealth: Diversified | Net Worth: $4 Billion
Mistry’s father’s death left him and his brother (Firoz, above) with 4.6% stakes in Tata Sons. Now, he and Firoz are helping to refinance the debts of the construction company Shapoorji Pallonji Group, in which they inherited 25% ownership. In March, they secured $3.3 billion in credit for the SP Group from a slate of five private funds, including Ares Management Corp and Davidson Kempner Capital Management.
Katharina von Baumbach
Age: 25 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Pharma | Net Worth: $5.4 Billion
Katharina is the third-youngest person to inherit part of the Boehringer Ingelheim fortune. She has three brothers and is the only girl among the young heirs.
Maxim Tebar
Age: 24 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Chainsaws | Net Worth: $1.1 Billion
Tebar’s wealth comes from owning part of Stihl, a top company that makes chainsaws and other handheld power tools. The company started in 1926 when Andreas Stihl created the first two-person electric chainsaw. Today, Stihl sells its products in more than 160 countries but is still wholly owned by the family.
Remi Dassault
Age: 23 | Citizenship: France | Source of Wealth: Diversified | Net Worth: $2.8 Billion
Dassault’s great-grandfather survived the Holocaust and invented a propeller used by the French Air Service during World War I. He also started the company that later became the big aerospace company Dassault Aviation. Remi inherited about 4.1% of that company when his father passed away in 2021. He also owns about 2.5% of the software company Dassault Systèmes.
Luca Del Vecchio
Age: 23 | Citizenship: Italy | Source of Wealth: Eyeglasses | Net Worth: $6.6 Billion
He, his brother, and half-brother (mentioned above and below) are the wealthiest people under 30 because they own parts of the huge eyeglasses company EssilorLuxottica. Their family company, Delfin, also owns shares in other big companies in Italy and France, like the bank UniCredit and the insurance company Generali. He doesn’t work directly with EssilorLuxottica or Delfin.
Kim Jung-min
Age: 23 | Citizenship: South Korea | Source of Wealth: Online gaming | Net Worth: $1.3 Billion
She and her sister (mentioned below) each inherited about 9% of Nexon, an online gaming company from South Korea and Japan, after their father, the company’s founder Kim Jung-ju, died in 2022. Nexon was one of the first companies to offer free-to-play games and is a leader in online role-playing games where many players play together, called MMORPGs.
Franz von Baumbach
Age: 23 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Pharma | Net Worth: $5.4 Billion
Franz is the second-youngest heir to the German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim, based in Ingelheim. Not much is known about him or his brothers and sisters (listed above and below).
Kevin David Lehmann
Age: 22 | Citizenship: Germany | Source of Wealth: Drugstores | Net Worth: $3.6 Billion
Lehmann got his fortune when his father gave him 50% of dm-drogerie Markt, Germany’s top drugstore chain, in 2017. Lehmann was just 14 years old at the time. His father first invested in the company in 1974, not long after it was started in 1973. Now, the chain has about 4,120 stores across Europe. Neither Lehmann nor his father works in running the company.
Kim Jung-Youn
Age: 21 | Citizenship: South Korea | Source of Wealth: Online gaming | Net Worth: $1.3 Billion
Even though she doesn’t work at the company, she and her sister (mentioned above) each own about 9% of the game developer Nexon, which they inherited from their late father. People in more than 190 countries play Nexon’s more than 80 live games, including popular ones like MapleStory, KartRider, and Dungeon & Fighter.
Clemente Del Vecchio
Age: 20 | Citizenship: Italy | Source of Wealth: Eyeglasses | Net Worth: $6.6 Billion
Like his siblings (above), he owes his wealth to his 12.5% ownership of the holding company Delfin, which has a stake in EssilorLuxottica, the eyeglass company behind shade offerers like Arnette, Ray-Ban and Persol. He has no role at EssilorLuxottica. He and his brother Luca (above) are the two children his late father had with the company’s former head of investor relations, Sabina Grossi.
Lívia Voigt de Assis
Age: 20 | Citizenship: Brazil | Source of Wealth: Industrial machinery | Net Worth: $1.2 Billion
Voigt is the youngest billionaire who inherited money from WEG cofounder Werner Ricardo Voigt. She owns 3.1% of the company, just like her sister (mentioned above). She is studying psychology at university. After Forbes called her the world’s youngest billionaire last year, she said on social media that she wants to stay private and keep a low profile online.
conclusion
In conclusion, the world’s youngest billionaires of 2025 represent a diverse and rapidly evolving landscape of innovation, entrepreneurship and technological advancements. From groundbreaking achievements in AI, fintech and biotech to visionary leadership in sustainable businesses these young billionaires are reshaping industries and redefining success. Their stories are a testament to the power of creativity, resilience and the ability to capitalize on emerging trends. As they continue to push boundaries, it’s clear that the future of wealth will not only be measured by financial success but by the transformative impact these individuals have on society and the global economy offering hope for a brighter future.
