Forbes has released its annual World’s Billionaires list and this year sees 12 of them under the age of 30. They hail from equally diverse backgrounds, including four Stanford dropouts, two food delivery entrepreneurs and a cryptocurrency expert.

Seven of them are declared as self-made by Forbes, with the other five being heirs to established fortunes. The youngest of the lot is a mere teenager, the 19-year-old heir to a German drugstore chain.

From Forbes list of World’s youngest billionaires, here are the 10 from oldest to youngest.

Gustav Magnar Witzoe

Age: 28
Net worth: $4.5 billion
Source of wealth: Fish Farming
Country: Norway

Gustav Magnar Witzoe gets his fortune from his ownership of nearly half of Salmar ASA in Norway, one of the world’s largest producers of salmon. He was gifted his stake of the company in 2013 by his father Gustav Witzoe, who founded it in 1991. Salmar transformed fish farming in Norway, industrializing the landscape by refining the product into more sophisticate cuts for higher returns of profit. While his father runs the company, Gustav Magnar is diversifying by going into real estate and tech startups.

Gary Wang

Age: 28
Net worth: $5.9 billion
Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency
Country: United States

This MIT graduate co-founder and current Chief Technology Officer of Cryptocurrency exchange FTX started off working at Google, building systems to aggregate prices across flights. It was in 2019 that he linked up with fellow billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried to launch FTX, one of the leading exchanges built “by traders, for traders” for buying and selling crypto derivatives. According to Forbes, Wang today owns about 16% in ownership of the exchange, which raised $400 million at a $32 billion valuation in January 2022. He also owns about 18% of its US operations, which investors valued at $8 billion.

Ryan Breslow

Age: 27
Net worth: $2 billion
Source of wealth: E-commerce
Country: United States

Dropping out of Stanford in 2014 to launch his payment startup Bolt, he raised $1.3 million for it, including $355 million in January 2022, which valued the company at $11 billion, reports Forbes. However, the fan of yoga, meditation and dancing stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman, but only after initiating a four-day work week for his 700 employees. Bolt caught the eye of investors like Black Rock, General Atlantic and SAP by promising an Amazon-style checkout to millions of online retailers.

Austin Russell

Age: 27
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Source of wealth: Autonomous car tech
Country: United States

Optics prodigy Austin Russell dropped out of college to found and run automotive sensor firm Luminar Technologies, which went public in a SPAC merger in December 2020. He developed the idea of Luminar when he was studying physics at Stanford University at the age of 17, according to Forbes. He received a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship from a programme funded by billionaire Peter Thiel and dropped out in 2012 to pursue his project. Following Luminar’s listing on Nasdaq, Russell became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 25 years old. Luminar stands as competition with laser lidar makers like Velodyne and Aeva, which produce high-tech sensors to help self-driving vehicles detect their surroundings.

Katharina Andresen

Age: 26
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Source of wealth: Investment firm
Country: Norway

Katharina and her younger sister Alexandra came into their fortunes by each inheriting 42% of the family-owned investment company Ferd, that runs hedge funds, is an active investor on the Nordic stock exchange and has private equity investments. Their father Johan still runs the company and controls 70% of the votes via a dual-class share structure.

Henrique Dubugras

Age: 26
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: Fintech
Country: Brazil

This co-CEO of BREX aims to overhaul the corporate credit card with his fintech startup. He and his co-founder Pedro Franceschi met in high school and struck a bond through a Twitter argument in 2012, before launching a payments startup for small businesses in Brazil called Pagar.me in 2013. It was bought over by a larger Brazilian rival in 2015. Dubugras went to Stanford with Franceschi after, but stayed only a year before dropping out to start Brex in 2017. By January 2022, he became a billionare when Brex, based in California, raised money from private investors who valued it at $12.3 billion.

Wang Zelong

Age: 25
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: Pigment production
Country: China

Not much is known about Wang except that he garnered his fortune from stakes in CNNC Hua Yuan Titanium Dioxide and Lomon Billions Group – two companies that produce titanium dioxide in China. Odourless and absorbent, titanium dioxide is widely used as pigment for lending whiteness and opacity as well as a bleaching agent in porcelain enamels for brightness, hardness and acid resistance.

Pedro Franceschi

Age: 25
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: Fintech
Country: Brazil

The co-founder of Brex alongside Henrique Dubugras, Franceschi grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he met Dubugras, started and sold a first fintech startup together, enrolled in Stanford, dropped out and together once more started Brex. He became a billionare in January 2022 when Brex, based in California, raised money from private investors who valued it at $12.3 billion.

Alexandra Andresen

Age: 25
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Source of wealth: Investment firm
Country: Norway

Alexandra and her older sister Katharina came into their fortunes by each inheriting 42% of the family-owned investment company Ferd, that runs hedge funds, is an active investor on the Nordic stock exchange and has private equity investments. Their father Johan still runs the company and controls 70% of the votes via a dual-class share structure.

Kevin David Lehmann

Age: 19
Net worth: $2.4 billion
Source of wealth: Drugstores
Country: Germany

Kevin David Lehmann inherited his fortune from his 50% ownership of Germany’s leading drugstore chain dm (drogerie markt) that rakes in over $12 billion in revenue annually. Dm was founded in 1973 by Goetz Werner in Karlsruhe, Germany, and today has some 3,700 locations. Kevin’s father Guenther, invested in dm in 1974, before transferring 50% of its stake to Kevin in 2017. However, neither father nor son are operationally involved in the business.

(Source: Forbes)