The artificial intelligence industry is rapidly creating new billionaires

PANews reported on August 10th that, according to CNBC, the artificial intelligence industry has minted dozens of new billionaires this year, rapidly making the AI boom the largest wealth creation boom in recent history. This year, massive funding rounds for startups like Anthropic, Safe Superintelligence, OpenAI, and Anysphere have created enormous paper fortunes and pushed valuations to record levels. According to CB Insights, there are currently 498 AI "unicorns"—private AI companies valued at over $1 billion—with a total value of $2.7 trillion. A full 100 of these were founded after 2023. The firm states that there are currently over 1,300 AI startups valued at over $100 million. Combined with the soaring stock prices of Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and other publicly traded AI-related companies, the infrastructure companies building data centers and computing power, and the massive salaries being paid to AI engineers, the scale of personal wealth creation in AI makes the past two tech booms look like warm-ups. “Looking back over 100 years of data, we’ve never seen wealth creation of this magnitude and speed,” said lead researcher Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s unprecedented.”