AI Boom Produces a New Class of Paper Billionaires

The recent artificial intelligence boom has not only made established tech billionaires richer but has also created a wave of new, largely paper, billionaires from smaller start-ups. Founders who have reached nine-figure and billionaire paper valuations include Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo of Scale AI (after a $14.3 billion investment from Meta), the Cursor co‑founders Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Aman Sanger and Arvid Lunnemark (whose company was valued at $27 billion), and Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity (valued at about $20 billion, per PitchBook).

Other startup leaders whose holdings surged in value include Brett Adcock of Figure AI (the company reported his net worth at $19.5 billion), Ilya Sutskever of Safe Superintelligence (valued at $32 billion after a $2 billion raise), Mira Murati of Thinking Machines Lab (valued at $10 billion by June before a product release) and the founders of Mercor (valued at $10 billion in October).

Harvey’s valuation climbed rapidly this year after multiple funding rounds, rising from $3 billion in February to $8 billion, lifting founders Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra into the billionaire range on paper. Many of the new paper billionaires are under 40 — several are in their 20s — and most founded their companies after ChatGPT’s release, seeing investor bids push private valuations upward in months rather than years.

Scale AI was an exception, growing more slowly before Meta’s large investment.

Key Topics

AI, United States, Tech, Startups, Billionaires, Valuations, Venture Capital