AI creates new billionaires at a record pace

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Startups for artificial intelligence have made dozens of new billionaires this year, which contributes to an AI tree that quickly becomes the greatest creation creation of wealth in recent history.

Blockbuster -fundraising rounds this year for anthropic, safe super intelligence, OpenAi, Anysphere and other startups have created huge new paper fortunes and propellers the ratings to capture levels. There are now 498 AI “Unicorns”, or private AI companies with ratings of $ 1 billion or more, with a combined value of $ 2.7 trillion, according to CB Insights. Fully 100 of them have been established since 2023. There are more than 1,300 AI startups with ratings of more than $ 100 million, the company said.

Combined with the rising stock prices of Nvidia” Meta” Microsoft And other listed AI-related companies, together with the infrastructure companies that build data centers and computing power and the enormous payouts for AI engineers, creates personal wealth on a scale that looks like warming-ups in the past two technical waves.

“Returning more than 100 years of data, we have never seen the wealth on this size and speed,” says Andrew McAfee, lead researcher at MIT. “It's unprecedented.”

A new harvest of billionaires increases with Sky-accumulating ratings. In March, Bloomberg estimated that four of the largest private AI companies had created at least 15 billionaires with a combined net value of $ 38 billion. Since then, more than a dozen unicorns have been crowned.

Mira Murati, who left open AI last September, launched the Thinking Machines lab in February. By July, she picked up $ 2 billion in the largest seed round in history, giving the company a rating of $ 12 billion, according to reports.

Anthropic AI is in conversation to pick up $ 5 billion in a rating of $ 170 billion, almost three times the appreciation in March. CEO Dario Amodei and his six other founders are now probably multibillionaries, according to people who are familiar with the company.

Anysphere was appreciated at $ 9.9 billion in a fundraising in June and only a few weeks later a valuation of $ 18 billion to $ 20 billion was offered, probably his 25-year-old founder and CEO, Michael Truell, a billionaire.

Admittedly, the majority of the AI Wealth Creation is in private companies, making it difficult for shareholders and founders to cash in. In contrast to the DOT-Com-Boom of the late nineties, when a stream of companies became public, today's AI startups can stay private longer, given the constant investment of venture capital funds, sovereign power funds, family agencies and other technical investors.

At the same time, the rapid growth of secondary markets of stock owners of private companies can sell their shares to other investors and offer liquidity. Structured secondary sales or tender offers are widely enhanced. Many founders can also borrow against their equity.

Open AI holds conversations for a secondary share sales to provide cash to employees. The proposed valuation of $ 500 billion follows the fundraising of the company in March that resulted in a rating of $ 300 billion.

Dozens of private companies are taken over or merge, and also offer liquidity. After Meta had invested $ 14.3 billion in scale AI, founder Alexandr Wang joined the AI team of Meta. There have been 73 liquidity events – including mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, reverse mergers or business majority stake – since 2023, according to CB Insights. After the Meta-deal bought AIs co-founder, Lucy Guo, who left the company in 2018, a mansion in Hollywood Hills from LA for around $ 30 million.

Yet the AI over voltage is largely centered in the Bay Area, reminiscent of the DOT-COM era. Last year Silicon Valley companies collected more than $ 35 billion in durffinancing, according to the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. San Francisco now has more billionaires than New York, compared to the 66 of New York, according to New World Wealth and Henley & Partners. The millionaire population of the Bay Area has doubled over the past decade compared to the growth of 45%in New York.

According to Sotheby's International Realty, more houses have been sold more than $ 20 million in San Francisco than in any other year in history. Rising rental prices, house prices and demand in the city, largely attributed to AI, mark a sharp turning for a city that is confronted with a “Doom Loop” a few years ago.

“It is amazing how geographically concentrated this AI golf is,” says McAfee, who is also co-director of MIT's initiative on the digital economy. “The people who know how to find technology companies and finance and grow. I have heard people say 25 years 'This is the end of the Silicon Valley' or another place is 'the new Silicon Valley'. But Silicon Valley is still Silicon Valley.”

Over time and first public offers, many of the contemporary private -Fortuinen will eventually become liquid and offer a historical opportunity for asset management companies. All major private banks, wirehouses, independent advisers and boutique companies were sent to the AI elite in the hope of winning their business.

Just like the Dot-Kom Millionaires, luring the AI Wealthy can be a challenge for traditional asset management companies. Simon Krinsky, executive director of Pathstone and former director of Hall Capital Partners in San Francisco, said that most AI Wealth is locked up in private companies and therefore cannot be converted into asset management accounts.

“I would say that a much higher percentage of the ultimate wealth is created is illiquid,” he said. “There are ways to get liquidity, but it is small compared to work at Meta or Google” or another mega -granted technology company.

Ultimately, those fortunes will become liquid and will be appreciated by asset management companies. Krinsky said that the AI Wealthy will probably follow similar customer patterns as the new rich point-comers of the 1990s. Initially, the DOT comers used their surplus liquidity and assets to invest in similar technology companies they knew through their networks, colleagues or shared investors. He said that the same is probably true for the AI Wealthy.

“Everyone turned around and invested with their friends in the same kind of companies that created their own wealth,” he said.

After discovering the dangers of having all their wealth in one very volatile and speculative industry, the point-comers turned to asset management. And born Disruptors, many many their capital and skills to reinvent the asset management industry to their image. Netscape founder Jim Clark helped, for example, launch MyCFO, a response to his aversion to bankers and the industry.

Krinksy said that today's AI entrepreneurs will probably follow the same path, with a huge potential for AI to disrupt many of the traditional functions of asset management -if not replaced -.

Ultimately, however, the ultra-rich AI founders will discover the need for traditional, personalized service that can only offer dedicated asset management teams, whether it concerns taxes, inheritance and estate planning or philanthropy advice and portfolio building.

“After people were beaten or bruised in the early 2000s, they came to appreciate a certain degree of diversification and perhaps hire a professional manager to protect them against themselves,” Krinksy said. “I expect a similar trend with the AI group.”