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The World's Youngest Billionaires 2015: 46 Under 40

This article is more than 9 years old.

If you have used Facebook, Uber or GoPro, you have helped some of the globe's most youthful billionaires build their ten digit fortunes.

Of the 1,826 members of the Forbes Billionaires ranking, 46 are under the age of 40, and just under half of them owe their fortunes to technology.

Becoming a three comma net worth before the age of 30 is a nearly impossible feat, but three new billionaires can claim it: Snapchat cofounders Evan Spiegel, 24, and Bobby Murphy, 26, join beer heir and DJ Julio Mario Santo Domingo, 29, on the global richlist.

Snapchat's Evan Spiegel, CEO of the temporary photo messaging company, is the world's youngest billionaire. He met cofounder Murphy at Stanford's Kappa Sigma frat house. After their first disappearing photo app flopped, they rebranded and launched Snapchat in 2011. The free app is now used by 100 million people monthly. Valued by investors at $10 billion, FORBES estimates that Speigel and Murphy each own at least 15%.

"We weren't cool," Murphy told Forbes in 2013 regarding his and Spiegel's experience in college. "So we tried to build things to be cool."

In addition to the three twenty-something newcomers, another 18 under 40 are making their debut. Twenty-seven of these billionaires made their own luck and 20 did so in the tech world. Among the self-made new additions: Airbnb's Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky; Uber's Travis Kalanick, Ryan Graves and Garrett Camp; and blood test developer Elizabeth Holmes, 31.  One of nine women in the youth group, she is the youngest self-made woman in the world.

The wealthiest youngster is Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who made his own debut on the list at 23. He is now worth $33.4 billion and is the 16th richest person in the world, the first time he's ever been among the top 20 in the world. Today, Zuckerberg's social network, birthed out of a Harvard dorm room, boasts some 1.4 billion users. Its Instagram unit has over 300 million photo accounts, while mobile messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $19 billion in cash and stock in 2014, carries 700 million users.

Zuckerberg is one of three billionaires under 40 who earned their fortunes through Facebook; Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's third employee, and Sean Parker, the company's founding president, also built their bank accounts there.

The kids club no longer includes Shutterstock's Jon Oringer, who has since turned 40. (He became New York's first tech billionaire in 2013 thanks to the soaring value of Shutterstock, the stock photo service he founded 10 years earlier and took public in 2012.)

The 46 billionaires under 40 have a combined net worth of $152.8 billion, putting their average net worth at $3.3 billion. Just under half of these young and wealthy people are U.S. citizens, while the others hail from the rest of the globe. Find the full list below.

 

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