In the Forbes 400 list, at least 15 are under the age of 40 and the youngest being 29-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, who has a net worth $22.5 billion.
Many millennials have become avid investors as a result of the market’s wild swings and astounding surge since the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, and no one has benefitted more from their fixation with meme stocks and cryptomania than a few of their younger peers.
Read more: Forbes features Pakistan’s Systems Limited and Highnoon in its ‘Best Under A Billion’ 2021 list
Here are the 15 youngest members of The Forbes 400
Sam Bankman-Fried
Age: 29
Net worth: $22.5 billion
Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency
Sam Bankman-Fried, 29, is the youngest person on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, with a fortune of $22.5 billion thanks to the quick rise of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he created two years ago in Hong Kong, and his own crypto investments. Bankman-Fried wants to be a poster boy for “effective altruism,” therefore he’s trying to make as much money as possible so he can give it away where it’s most needed. He hasn’t increased his contributions yet, preferring to reinvest revenues in his company to increase his wealth even further.
Evan Spiegel
Age: 31
Net worth: $13.8 billion
Source of wealth: Snapchat
As shares of the social media app rocketed to record highs, the fortunes of Snapchat’s cofounders more than tripled since last year’s list. To compete with TikTok, Snapchat launched its Spotlight feature in November, which curates other users’ videos in a new feed and implements a marketplace to pay popular content creators.
Bobby Murphy
Age: 33
Net worth: $15.2 billion
Source of wealth: Snapchat
Murphy is Snapchat’s chief technology officer.
Fred Ehrsam
Age: 33
Net worth: $3.5 billion
Source of wealth: Coinbase Cryptocurrency exchange Cofounder
Ehrsam cofounded Coinbase Global in 2012 and left in 2017, but he kept about 6% of the company’s equity, which accounted for the majority of his wealth. He cofounded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment business with investments in dozens of firms, including Coinbase and FTX, in 2018.
Lukas Walton
Age: 35
Net worth: $17.2 billion
Source of wealth: Walmart
Walton is the son of John Walton, who died in a plane crash in 2005, and the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton. He is the chair of the Walton Family Foundation’s environment programme committee and inherited one-third of his father’s inheritance.
Baiju Bhatt
Age: 36
Net worth: $2.9 billion
Source of wealth: Stock trading app
Bhatt served as co-CEO of Robinhood Markets, a commission-free trading platform, until November 2020. He has an 8% ownership in the company, which went public in July with a $32 billion valuation.
Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 37
Net worth: $134.5 billion
Source of wealth: Facebook
In the 12 months ending June 30, Facebook’s stock increased by more than 50% as the ubiquitous social networking business topped $100 billion in revenue, adding roughly $50 billion to Zuckerberg’s fortune and making him one of the Forbes 400’s eight centibillionaires.
Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 37
Net worth: $24.1 billion
Source of wealth: Facebook
Moskovitz cofounded Asana with Facebook coworker Justin Rosenstein in 2008, and the company went public in a direct offering in September 2020, with shares more than tripling in the year after. Moskovitz controls nearly a third of Facebook’s $18 billion market valuation, but the majority of his personal worth is still connected to a 2% investment in the firm.
Brian Armstrong
Age: 38
Net worth: $11.5 billion
Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency exchange
Armstrong is the CEO of Coinbase Global, and when he took the crypto exchange public in a public listing in April, his 19 percent ownership became worth 11 figures.
Nathan Blecharczyk
Age: 38
Net worth: $10 billion
Source of wealth: Airbnb
In the biggest IPO of 2020, Airbnb went public last December, surging beyond a $100 billion valuation on its first day of trading. Its second-quarter revenue of $1.34 billion was about 300 percent higher than it was at the start of the pandemic. In 2008, Blecharczyk, Chesky, and Gebbia, both now 40 years old, cofounded the holiday rental company. Airbnb said in August that it would provide 20,000 Afghan refugees with free temporary accommodation.
Scott Duncan
Age: 38
Net worth: $6.2 billion
Source of wealth: Pipelines
After their father Dan Duncan died in 2010, Duncan and his three elder siblings each acquired an interest in Enterprise Products Partners, a pipeline company. Its stock has recovered after a steep drop in 2020 as oil prices plummeted, but it remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
RJ Scaringe
Age: 38
Net worth: $3.4 billion
Source of wealth: Electric vehicles
Scaringe makes his first appearance on the list after his company, Rivian, was valued at $27.6 billion in January 2021, and Amazon, Ford, and T. Rowe Price led a $2.5 billion funding round in July, bringing its total funding to $10.5 billion—all before it has delivered a single electric car to customers. According to the business, production of the R1T electric pickup truck began in September, with the R1S SUV following closely behind.
Ernest Garcia III
Age: 39
Net worth: $9.3 billion
Source of wealth: Used cars
In 2012, Garcia created Carvana as a subsidiary of his father’s used car dealer DriveTime, which sells used automobiles online and allows consumers to pick them up from giant vending machines. Ernest Garcia II is the company’s top shareholder and has sold billions of dollars’ worth of stock in the last 18 months as the stock has risen in value. However, for violating dealer licencing regulations, the North Carolina DMV barred Carvana from selling cars from its Raleigh site until January 2022 in August.
Lynsi Snyder
Age: 39
Net worth: $4.2 billion
Source of wealth: In-N-Out Burger
Snyder inherited the In-N-Out Burger chain from her grandparents, who launched it in 1948. She is the only woman under the age of 40 on The Forbes 400. She became president of In-N-Out Burger at the age of 27 in 2010—her father and uncle both died early in the 1990s—and has since established more than 100 outlets.
Ben Silbermann
Age: 39
Net worth: $3.3 billion
Source of wealth: Social media site Pinterest
After the photo-sharing site’s stock more than doubled since last year’s list, Silbermann, the cofounder and CEO of Pinterest, is another newcomer to The Forbes 400. As users flooded to the site to exchange recipes or home decor ideas during the pandemic, he introduced the first desktop version of Pinterest in 2010, and the company’s sales climbed nearly 50% to $1.7 billion in 2020.
