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Artificial intelligence is rapidly creating new billionaires across the world, but the surge in wealth is also coinciding with significant disruption to traditional technology businesses, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2026.
The report stated that 114 of the world’s 4,020 billionaires are now linked to artificial intelligence companies. Nearly half of them — 46 individuals — are new entrants to the list, highlighting the rapid pace at which wealth is being generated through AI-driven businesses.
Rupert Hoogewerf, chief researcher of the report, stated, according to Mint, that wealth was created faster last year than at any point in the history of the Hurun Global Rich List. He informed that more than 700 new billionaires were added during the year, averaging roughly two new names every day. Hoogewerf also stated that China emerged as the biggest contributor, accounting for roughly half of the new entrants.
The report highlighted that artificial intelligence became the dominant wealth engine globally over the past year. Several technology leaders saw their fortunes rise sharply, including Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, and Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI.
With Nvidia’s chips powering much of the global AI expansion, Huang’s wealth increased by 34 per cent to reach $172 billion as the semiconductor company crossed a $5 trillion valuation milestone. The increase placed him as the ninth richest person on the list.
The report also stated that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, rose to the third and fifth positions respectively as parent company Alphabet Inc. surpassed a $4 trillion market valuation. The rise was driven in part by global adoption of the Gemini 4 artificial intelligence model and the continued strength of Google Cloud services.
Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, also saw his wealth increase significantly, rising 32 per cent to $267 billion as the company expanded aggressively into artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Sam Altman’s wealth also increased sharply, with the OpenAI founder seeing his net worth nearly triple to $4.7 billion.
The report further noted that Anthropic, developer of the Claude AI system, created seven new billionaires as the company’s valuation climbed to $380 billion. Siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, along with five other co-founders, each reached personal fortunes of around $3.7 billion.
Among the largest wealth increases in percentage terms was Brett Adcock, founder of humanoid robotics company Figure AI. His net worth rose more than tenfold to about $16 billion as the company’s valuation climbed to $39 billion.
The youngest self-made billionaires on the Hurun Global Rich List 2026 — Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha — are all aged 22 and are founders of the artificial intelligence recruitment startup Mercor. Each has an estimated net worth of about $2.4 billion.
China remained the country with the highest number of billionaires, with 1,110 individuals on the list and 318 new entrants added during the year. However, the report stated that only two of the new Chinese billionaires were linked directly to AI.
Despite that, several Chinese technology leaders associated with artificial intelligence saw their wealth grow significantly. Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, added $19 billion to his wealth, taking his fortune to $79 billion. Ma Huateng, chief executive of Tencent, saw his net worth rise to $66 billion.
Other notable gains included Chen Tianshi, chief executive of Cambricon Technologies, whose wealth doubled to $25 billion, and Wang Weixiu of data centre provider Zhongji Innolight, whose wealth rose sixfold to $15 billion.
The report also noted wealth increases for Robin Li Yanhong, chief executive of Baidu, whose net worth reached $12 billion, and Cai Huabo, chief executive of storage solutions provider Longsys, whose fortune climbed to $7.2 billion.
However, the report warned that the rapid wealth creation driven by artificial intelligence is accompanied by significant disruption in legacy technology sectors. Hoogewerf stated that the AI revolution has a direct shadow side, describing it as a historic destruction of wealth among traditional software and data companies being disrupted by new technologies.
The report pointed to examples including Michael Bloomberg, whose wealth fell by 13 per cent to $80 billion, and Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, co-founders of Atlassian, whose fortunes declined by about half.
It also stated that Marc Benioff of Salesforce and David Duffield of Workday each saw their wealth drop by roughly one-third as artificial intelligence began replacing parts of the market previously served by traditional software-as-a-service tools.
The report added that the founding families behind India’s IT outsourcing companies collectively saw their wealth decline by about a quarter.
Hoogewerf stated that the trend reflects a stark shift in the global technology economy, explaining that every dollar of new wealth generated by artificial intelligence broadly corresponds to a dollar of disruption within legacy technology sectors.
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