Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, January 6th. Today on Forbes, 40 under 40, the richest

self-made billionaires under 40. In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire ever

at age 23. Six years later, he overtook Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as the world's

richest self-made billionaire under 40 on Forbes's annual world's billionaires list. The Meta-Chief

held on to that title for a record 11 straight years before aging out in May 24 when he turned 40. That made room for brothers Patrick Collison,

who was 37 years old, and John Collison, who was 35, of Stripe, to claim that crown on Forbes's

latest annual ranking last March, though their reign didn't last long. As of this fall, there's a new

richest self-made billionaire under 40,

Serge A.I's 38-year-old founder, Edwin Chen, who is worth an estimated $18 billion. He is one of

27 new self-made billionaires under the age of 40 to have minted three comma fortunes just since

March when Forbes locked in our 2025

world's billionaires list, and nearly half of these newcomers made their money in AI.

Altogether, Forbes found 71 billionaires aged 39 or younger who built their own fortunes,

rather than inheriting them, as of December 2025.

The only other time the number of under 40 self-made billionaires was this high, was amid the

COVID-fueled stock market craze that led to a record 71 on the 2021 list. It later bottomed out

at 34 in 2023 after the bubble burst and a number of billionaires aged

out.

All but 11 of today's young billionaire entrepreneurs made their money in tech, 48, or finance

and investments, 12.

Just under half, or 32 of them, are American.

Citizens of China, 8, India, six, Australia, three, Sweden, three, and Canada, three,

...