Here's how the two youngest self-made billionaires in the world made their fortunes
Forbes recently released its list of 2025 World's Youngest Billionaires, featuring 21 of the richest people in the world under 30. Among them, two in the ranking are self-made.
As the media company noted, most of the youngsters on the list inherited their wealth, including the Del Vecchio brothers, the heirs of eyeglass empire EssilorLuxottica.
But Alexandr Wang and Ed Craven made their billions on their own through their tech ventures.
Ed Craven
Born in 1996, Craven is the son of businessman Jamie Craven, who was banned from working in financial services for five years and jailed for six months over the collapse of Spedley Securities, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The 29-year-old met Bijan Tehrani online as teens through the online game RuneScape. They started gambling within the game, wagering coins on fights, which sparked controversy with RuneScape's makers.
The duo—at 18 and 20—dabbled in crypto in 2014, creating a game called Primedice where players bet Bitcoin on virtual dice rolls. They earned enough to start a company, Easygo, with 18 employees in 2016. They eventually launched Stake, which would end up being the "largest offshore crypto casino in the world," as per Forbes.
Despite crypto gambling being unavailable in the US, UK, and most of Europe, Craven bet his money on content creators. They paid live streamers on Twitch to gamble. And during the pandemic when more people tuned into streaming sites like Twitch, it "put rocket boosters on the operation," Craven told the outlet.
They started getting big partnerships for Stake, including one with rap superstar Drake. Moreover, the duo put their money on marketing—with the brand's name being seen on Formula 1 cars, English Premier League jerseys, and more.
When Twitch banned streams of gambling games over a lack of protection, Craven and Tehrani launched their own streaming service, Kick.
Craven is now worth $2.8 billion (P160 billion), with Stake generating $4.7 billion (P268 billion) in the past year.
Alexandr Wang
Alexandr Wang was born to Chinese immigrants who worked as physicists in New Mexico. He grew up with a knack for math and computer programming.
At 17, he worked as a software engineer at Addepar, which is known as one of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. According to Forbes, when he was recruited, the company didn't know that he was a high school student. Wang, however, was able to prove that he was qualified for the job with his technical skills.
He landed a tech lead role at Quora in 2014.
"I think demonstrating as much as possible that I knew how to build things, was crucial," he told Forbes in a 2019 interview. "[Companies were] built on people who come in and see a particular inefficiency or see a better way. It's something that can be done and just drive those initiatives to completion," he said in an interview with Forbes.
Eventually, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but dropped out a year later at 19 to start his own company, Scale AI, with Lucy Guo after an investment from YCombinator.
His company, a data annotation platform, worked with other firms to put their raw data to work for AI and machine learning. Among its clients are big brands like Microsoft, General Motors, Etsy, Samsung, Uber, Meta, and even the US government.
He now has a $2 billion (P114 billion) net worth.
World’s youngest nillionaires
The other 19 members on the list came from wealthy families. The youngest is 19-year-old Johannes von Baumbach, the youngest heir to the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. He's currently worth $5.4 billion. His other three siblings Franz (23), Katharina (25), and Maximilian (27) also made it to the list.
Also in the ranking are heirs including 30-year-old Sophie Luise Fielmann, who inherited her late father Günther Fielmann’s Fielmann AG eyewear; 22-year-old Kevin David Lehmann, who holds 50% of shares of dm-drogerie markt, Germany’s leading drugstore chain; and Italy’s Del Vecchio brothers Leonardo, Luca, and Clemente who inherited part of the eyewear brand EssilorLuxottica.
Sisters Katharina and Alexandra Andresen hold shares for their investment firm Ferd, which specializes in real estate, finance, and private Nordic companies.
Mistry brothers Firoz and Zahan inherited 4.6% stakes in the $165 billion Mumbai-based multinational conglomerate Tata Sons from their late father who died in a car accident in 2022.
Sisters Dora and Lívia Voigt de Assis own 3.1% of the Brazilian electrical motor producer WEG, which they inherited from their late grandfather Werner Ricardo Voigt, who cofounded it in 1961. According to Forbes, the siblings have no roles at the company, with Lívia expressing in 2024 that she prefers to maintain a low profile.
23-year-old Remi Dassault, meanwhile, owns an estimated 4.1% stake in the aerospace giant Dassault Aviation and an estimated 2.5% stake in the software firm Dassault Systèmes.
Check out Forbes' list of the World's Youngest Billionaires of 2025 here.
