These days, it's not enough to just be a millionaire. Nope, being a billionaire is where it's at. Being young and a billionaire is pretty much winning life's lotto as well. Imagine how cool it would be, to be under 40, and have all of the wealth, privilege, power, and spending ability that comes with a bank account of a billion dollars or more! Even more incredible, is that having achieved such amazing financial success so young, these billionaires are poised to live the easy life for most of their lives. Unlike most billionaires who work their whole lives to achieve this financial windfall later in life, this list of young billionaires has 40 or more years to enjoy their wealth. Some of these youngest billionaires inherited their fortunes, and others are self-made men and women. Either way, their wealth allows them to do some pretty spectacular things, like buy an island. The rest of us, well, we can only dream of such luxuries! What do a number of these young billionaires have in common? Stanford University. After incubating the first wave of tech billionaires such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Palo Alto, California campus is churning out the next generation of startup billionaires like Snapchat's Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, and Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes. So who are the youngest billionaires in the world?
As of March 2014, the youngest billionaire in the world is 24-year-old Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel. His net worth of $1.5 billion catapulted him onto this year's list. He co-founded the temporary photo messaging company with his Stanford classmate and Kappa Sigma fraternity brother, 25-year-old Bobby Murphy. The duo developed the app that allows you to send a contact a photo with a caption that disappears in 10 seconds or less. The app took off in the fall of 2011, and is now used by nearly 200 million people–for free. Spiegel recently purchased a $3.3 million house in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles as his first bachelor pad. Previously, he had lived in his father's Pacific Palisades home. That's one way to do it—go big or go home. Snapchat is valued at $10 billion. In 2013, Spiegel and Murphy spurned an offer from Facebook to acquire their company for $3 billion.
The youngest female billionaire is 31-year-old Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Holmes dropped out of Stanford her sophomore year to found Theranos in 2003, with the money she was supposed to use to pay her college tuition. Holmes is revolutionizing the world of medical testing. Traditional blood testing is difficult, uncomfortable, and expensive for a procedure that is so commonly used. There hasn't been any real innovation in the process since the 1960s. In both hospitals and doctors' offices, vials of blood are drawn and then have to be sent out to be tested. This can take weeks for results to come in, and is prone to a high degree of human error. And of course, there are some people, like Holmes, who are so afraid of needles they will go to all costs to avoid having blood drawn. The implications of Holmes' invention are simply mind-blowing. Think about it, one lone drop of blood (which is taken completely painlessly by the way), can now give you a ton of information about your health. Holmes has made it inexpensive, fast, and easy for people to have access to important information about their health. As diagnostic tests evolve, Theranos could actually allow people to head off life-altering diseases, like cancer and diabetes, before they happen.
Also debuting on the list of the world's youngest billionaires, is the trio that co-founded Airbnb. The company lists homes and apartments of private citizens for rental. Airbnb has over 800,000 listings in 33,000 cities and 192 countries. The company was founded in August 2008. The company is currently raising $1 billion in funding at a valuation of $20 billion. Nathan Blecharczyk, 31, 33-year-old Brian Chesky, and 33-year-old Joe Gebbia each have a net worth of $1.9 billion.
(David Ramos/Getty Images)
The Youngest Billionaires In The World:
- Evan Spiegel– $1.5 billion, 24, Co-Founded Snapchat
- Bobby Murphy– $1.5 billion, 25, Co-Founded Snapchat
- Julio Mario Santo Domingo III– $2.2 billion, 29, Heir to Bavaria Brewery fortune
- Mark Zuckerberg– $33.4 billion, 30, Facebook co-founder
- Dustin Moskovitz– $7.9 billion, 30, Facebook's third employee
- Tom Persson– $3 billion, 30, H&M heir
- Anton Katherein, Jr.– $1.7 billion, 30, heir to Katherein-Werke auto antenna/mobile communications fortune
- Elizabeth Holmes– $4.5 billion, 31, Founder Theranos
- Tatiana Casiraghi– $2.2 billion, 31, heiress to Bavaria Brewery fortune
- Nathan Blecharczyk– $1.9 billion, 31, co-founder Airbnb
- Ryan Graves– $1.4 billion, 31, Uber's first employee
- Drew Houston– $1.2 billion, 31, Dropbox co-founder, CEO
- Scott Duncan– $6.2 billion, 32, heir to Enterprise Products Partners (Texas oil pipeline)
- Eduardo Saverin– $4.8 billion, co-founder, Facebook
- Huiyan Yang– $5 billion, heiress to Chinese real estate developer fortune
- Brian Chesky– $1.9 billion, 33, co-founder and CEO, Airbnb
- Joe Gebbia– $1.9 billion, 33, co-founder AIrbnb
- Marie Besnier Beauvalot– $2.5 billion, 34, heiress to President Brie fortune
- Fahd Hariri– $1.1 billion, 34, real estate developer, son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister
- Sean Parker– $2.5 billion, 35, Napster co-founder, founding President of Facebook
- Markus "Notch" Persson– $1.3 billion, 35, Minecraft creator
- Mike Cannon-Brookes– $1.1 billion, 35, co-founder Atlassian (software development)
- Scott Farquhar– $1.1 billion, 35, co-founder Atlassian
- Garret Camp– $5.3 billion, 36, co-founder and chairman Uber
- Andres Santo Domingo– $4.4 billion, 36, Heir to Bavaria Brewery fortune
- Robert Pera– $1.8 billion, 36, founder Ubiquiti Networks, owner NBA's Memphis Grizzlies
- Julia Oetker– $1.3 billion, 36, heiress to baking powder and pudding fortune
- Ayman Hariri– $1.1 billion, 36, real estate developer, son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister
- Yvonne Bauer– $2.8 billion, 37, heiress and head of Bauer Media Group
- Naruatsu Baba– $1.6 billion, 37, Head of Colopl, smartphone game company
- Travis Kalanick– $5.2 billion, 38, CEO Uber
- Alejando Santo Dominigo Davila– $4.4 billion, 38, Heir to Bavaria Brewery fortune
- Charlotte Persson Soderstrom– $3 billion, 38, H&M heiress
- Jack Dorsey– $2.7 billion, 38, co-founder Twitter, co-founder Square
- Lawrence Ho– $2 billion, 38, heir to Macau gambling industry fortune, Melco International
- Yoshikazu Tanaka– $1.1 billion, 38, founder and CEO of social network Gree
- Jan Koum– $6.6 billion, 39, co-founder WhatsApp
- Rahel Blocher– $3.5 billion, heir to Swiss polymer and chemical fortune
- Karl-Johan Persson– $3 billion, 39, CEO of H&M, heir to H&M fortune
- Nicholas Woodman– $2.4 billion, 39, Founder GoPro
- Chase Coleman– $2.1 billion, 39, Tiger Global Management hedge fund
- Kenji Kasahara– $1.4 billion, 39, founder of social network Mixi
- Yusaki Maezawa– $1.3 billion, 39, founder Japanese online fashion mall Zozotown
- Serra Sabanci– $1 billion, 39, board member and shareholder of Turkish conglomerate Sabanci Holding
- Mohammed Dewji– $1.25 billion, 39, turned trading house his father founded into industrial conglomerate MeTL Group
