From Coffee to AI: How America’s Newest Billionaires Made Their Fortunes
In 2025, the price of admission to Forbes’ exclusive list of America’s 400 richest individuals reached an unprecedented $3.8 billion, reflecting a $500 million increase from the previous year due to booming markets. While most list members are returnees, 14 newcomers managed to break into this elite club, collectively worth a staggering $113.3 billion. Their stories represent the diverse paths to extreme wealth in modern America, from traditional industries to cutting-edge technology.
Leading this impressive group of first-timers is Edwin Chen, whose estimated $18 billion fortune stems from his data labeling company Surge AI. Founded in 2020 with minimal external funding, Chen built Surge into a critical partner for AI giants like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, growing annual revenue to over $1 billion in just five years. Close behind is Adam Foroughi, CEO of AppLovin, with $17.4 billion. His AI-powered advertising technology firm has seen its market capitalization increase more than sixfold since its 2021 IPO, placing three company figures on the Forbes 400 for the first time. Rounding out the top newcomers are Robert Pender and Michael Sabel, co-founders of Venture Global, a liquified natural gas exporter that went public in January 2025 in one of the largest energy IPOs in U.S. history. Despite subsequent stock volatility, each founder maintains a fortune of $12.8 billion.
Technology, particularly AI, dominates the newcomers’ list, with eight of the fourteen entrants deriving their wealth from tech ventures. This reflects broader market trends, with companies like CoreWeave, which provides cloud computing infrastructure for AI models, creating multiple billionaires through its 2025 IPO. CoreWeave co-founders Michael Intrator and Brian Venturo joined the list with fortunes of $6.7 billion and $4.2 billion respectively, driven by massive contracts with OpenAI. Similarly, Palantir co-founder Stephen Cohen made the cut with $5.4 billion as the data mining giant’s market cap surged to $360 billion, while Vlad Tenev of Robinhood saw his wealth quintuple to $5.8 billion as the trading app’s crypto business exploded.
Not all paths to the Forbes 400 ran through Silicon Valley, however. Travis Boersma represents one of the more traditional success stories, building Dutch Bros Coffee from a single pushcart in 1992 to a chain with over 1,000 locations across 19 states. His $4.3 billion fortune grew as the company’s stock price doubled over the past year. In healthcare, David Dean Halbert entered the list with $4.9 billion after his cancer diagnostics company, Caris Life Sciences, went public in June at a $5.9 billion valuation. The company uses gene sequencing and artificial intelligence to detect and monitor disease, demonstrating how even traditional industries are being transformed by technology.
The investment sector also contributed to the newcomers list, with Australian-American investor Michael Dorrell worth $8.5 billion as chairman and CEO of infrastructure investing firm Stonepeak, which he co-founded in 2011 and has grown to manage more than $76 billion in assets. Serial entrepreneur Marc Lore joined with $4 billion, having sold his e-commerce startup Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016 before launching food tech startup Wonder and becoming majority owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. At the threshold of the list sits Eduardo Vivas with $3.8 billion, who invested early in AppLovin and represents how savvy early-stage investments can still create massive wealth.
With an average age of 50—significantly younger than the overall Forbes 400 average of 70—these newcomers may remain fixtures on the list for decades to come. Their diverse backgrounds highlight that while technology, particularly AI, is creating new fortunes at breathtaking speed, opportunities still exist across multiple sectors for those with vision, timing, and execution. From coffee shops to cloud computing, America’s newest billionaires demonstrate that the pathways to extreme wealth continue to evolve, even as the entry price to this exclusive club reaches new heights.
