The Worlds Youngest Billionaires 2022: 12 Under Age 30

Spiegel dropped out of Stanford to start Snapchat with his fraternity brothers Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown in 2011 and became a billionaire by the age of 25. Now he and Murphy, 35, together own about a quarter of publicly traded Snap Inc., which generated $4.6 billion in revenue last year. In 2022, he paid off the student loan debt for the entire graduating class of the Otis College of Art and Design, where he’d taken classes during high school. For the first time since 2009, every billionaire under 30 inherited his or her fortune—the result of some self-made entrepreneurs aging into their 30s, and a sign that the “great wealth transfer” has begun. This year, the 25 youngest people on the Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list are all 33 or younger.

One of two children between Leonardo Del Vecchio and Sabrina Grossi, a former Luxottica board member and the company’s former head of investor relations, Luca is not known to have a role at the eyewear company. His Czechoslovak Group is one of the biggest suppliers of ammunition, ground equipment and artillery equipment to the Ukrainian army, which has helped double sales to $620 million in the first half of 2022. He took full control of the business, founded by his father, in 2018. Nineteen until July, and two months younger than Clemente Del Vecchio, she is the world’s youngest billionaire.

He was only two months shy of being declared the youngest billionaire in the world by Forbes. Luca Del Vecchio is the second Del Vecchio brother to make the youngest billionaire list in 2024. Like his older brother, he inherited a 12.5% stake in the family business when their father died in 2022. But unlike previous entries on this list, which include disgraced FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, all of the youngest billionaires in 2024 have family succession to thank for their fortunes.

SOURCE OF WEALTH: MEDICAL DEVICES

Witzoe owns nearly half of Salmar ASA, one of the world’s largest salmon producers, which is still run by his father. The Norwegian heir has dabbled in modeling as well as tech and real estate investing. From makeup mogul Kylie Jenner to Hong Kong real estate heir Jonathan Kwok, these 10 billionaires are worth $15.9 billion combined. When Günther Fielmann, the entrepreneur known for bringing cheap eyeglasses to Germany, died in January at the age of 84, he left much of his fortune to his two children, Sophie and Marc. While Marc, age 34, has helmed Fielmann AG since 2019, Sophie has no role in the eyeglasses company but still owns about a third of its stock. The self-taught software engineer made his first fortune when he launched the startup Oculus VR, selling a virtual reality headset he’d made at age 16, then cashed out to Facebook in 2014 in a $2 billion deal.

AGE: 26

Kevin David Lehmann once held the title of the world’s youngest billionaire at just 18 years old. In 2021, he inherited his money from stakes in a German drugstore chain transferred to him by his father. This year’s list features the children of titans of industries like gaming, pharmaceuticals, and eyewear. These young billionaires come from all over, but there are no Americans under 30 on the 2024 list, Forbes reported.

Norwegian sisters Alexandra, 28, and Katharina, 29, both own 42% stakes in Ferd, which has made their reported net worths $1.5 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively. Ferd invests in real estate, oil service business Interwell, and the largest private medical laboratory in Norway, according to Forbes. Del Vecchio is the 29-year-old son of Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Italian founder of eyewear brand EssilorLuxottica and former chair of Ray-Ban until his death in 2022. Upon their father’s death, Del Vecchio and his six siblings each inherited a 12.5% stake in the family’s holding company. They’re far from the only young billionaires to have joined the list in the past three years due to a father’s passing. Italy’s Clemente Del Vecchio, 19, received a hefty stake in the Italian-French maker of Ray-Ban, EssilorLuxottica, after the 2022 death of Leonardo Del Vecchio.

Livia Voigt is the youngest billionaire in 2024 at 19 years old with a net worth of $1.1 billion. She and her sister, 26-year-old Dora Voigt de Assis, who also has a net worth of $1.1 billion, are the granddaughters of Brazilian billionaire Werner Ricardo Voigt. Wang’s fortune comes from a stake in Shenzhen-listed traded company CNNC Hua Yuan Titanium Dioxide—a chemical used to create white pigment for things like paint and paper. Net worths were calculated using stock prices and currency exchange rates from March 11, 2022. It’s a rare feat to become a billionaire, especially at a young age. The average billionaire is 66, and the oldest person in the ranks is 102.

1. He and his brother Geoffrey, 38, owe their fortunes to the family’s Hong Kong real estate empire.
2. Eleven years later, his dad continues to operate the company while Gustav focuses on real estate and tech startup investments.
3. His sister Anna Maria Braun is CEO of the company, which has $8 billion in revenues and 64,000 employees globally.

Prior to his father’s death, he’d run the company’s organics division, but resigned because “I do not believe one should be both an employee and a shareholder of the same company,” according to a statement at the time. Red Bull generated $11.6 billion in revenue last year and sold 12.1 billion cans, enough for each person on earth to pep up with 1.5 energy drinks. Nearly all of these 25 who made the ranks are richer than last year. The rest are from Brazil, South Korea and Hong Kong (all heirs), or Japan and the United States (all self-made). He youngest billionaires on the planet haven’t even been alive for three decades, but that hasn’t stopped them from amassing three-comma fortunes.

Shares of Hong Kong-listed SHKP have declined nearly 18% since the coronavirus outbreak at the start of the year. Sisters Kim Jung-min, 22, and Kim Jung-youn, 20, each hold 9% of Nexon, the South Korean-Japanese gaming company their father founded in 1994, Forbes reported. He inherited 50% of German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt from his father at age 14.

Their 4.6% stakes in Indian conglomerate Tata Sons pushed both of their net worths over $5 billion in 2024. Along with her younger sister, Kim Jung-youn, Jung-min inherited around a third of their family’s assets—including a 15% stake each in game maker Nexon—after their father Kim Jung-ju died in February 2022. Jung-ju founded Nexon, known for its massively multiplayer online games Kingdom of the Winds and MapleStory, in 1994.

AGE: 23

In 2017, he founded the defense technology company Anduril, which has been sending drones to Ukraine. These inheritances illustrate the beginning of a long-anticipated generational wealth transfer among aging populations around the world. In the United States, Baby Boomers and their elders (those born in 1964 or earlier) hold $95.9 trillion of a total $147.1 trillion of household wealth, per the Federal Reserve. Trillions are expected to change hands every year as the affluent elderly pass away and leave their fortunes to descendants.

Twelve people under the age of 30 made Forbes’ 2022 list of the World’s Billionaires, including four Stanford dropouts, two food delivery magnates and a cryptocurrency whiz. Together, this rarefied group is worth $25.8 billion and represents less than half a percent of the 2,668 billionaires Forbes found this year. The Norwegian sisters each inherited 42% of the family-owned investment company Ferd in 2007. Their father Johan still runs Ferd and controls 70% of the voting rights via a dual-class share structure. Their late grandfather cofounded WEG, an electrical equipment producer; each woman owns 3.1%. Clemente Del Vecchio is the youngest of the Italian brothers on the under-30 list at 20 years old.

Dora Voigt de Assis

They founded the company in 2013, while still at Stanford, and took it public in 2020. Stripe, the payments company founded by John and his older brother Patrick, raised $250 million from investors at a $35 billion valuation in September 2019. John, born and raised near Limerick, Ireland, now lives in San Francisco, where Stripe is headquartered.

Luca Del Vecchio

Del Vecchio, who turns 19 in May, gets his fortune from a share of his father’s holding company Delfin, which has a stake in eyewear giant Luxottica (known for brands such as Ray-Ban and Sunglass Hut). Not much is known about the young heir, whose six siblings (two top 10 youngest billionaires in the world of whom are also under 30) and stepmother also make their debut. Even less is known about Kim, whose fortune lies in Japanese-South Korean online gaming giant Nexon.

It remained under a trusteeship until his 18th birthday, when he became a billionaire. Neither Lehmann nor his father is operationally involved in the $14 billion (revenue) company. The average billionaire is 65 years old, according to Forbes’ latest ranking of the planet’s richest people, and the eldest is insurance tycoon George Joseph, who’s 101.