These 10 relatively youthful moguls have a whole lot of money—and plenty of time to spend it.
By Samantha Kroontje, Contributor
It’s not easy to get rich quick. Just ask the members of The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s wealthiest people, who are 70 years old on average. Nearly two dozen are in their 90s and one, Dole Food Company’s David Murdock, is 101. But a lucky few have managed to amass at least $3.3 billion, the minimum net worth required to make the list, at a young age.
In all, there are 26 billionaires on The Forbes 400 who are under 50, including two thirtysomethings. The 10 youngest listees are all aged 42 or under. Together, these 10 super-rich relatively youthful billionaires are worth $273 billion.
Two-thirds of that sum comes from one young mogul alone: Mark Zuckerberg, who’s worth an estimated $181 billion. The Facebook cofounder debuted on the list in 2008 at age 24; he’s now 40, and—with shares of Facebook-parent company Meta at all-time highs—richer than ever. Zuck is the third-wealthiest American, and the fourth-youngest, eight days older than his cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who is third-youngest.
The Facebook founders’ 40th birthdays, in May, left just two members of The Forbes 400’s under-40 club: 39-year-old Josh Kushner, the venture capital billionaire who hails from a New York real estate dynasty, and 38-year-old Lukas Walton, a grandson of Sam Walton, the cofounder of Walmart. Lukas Walton is the youngest member of The Forbes 400 for the second straight year. Worth an estimated $33.9 billion, he has $900 million for every year he’s been alive.
Walton traversed the surest path to reaching billionaire status at a young age: He inherited billions. He’s one of four heirs among the ten youngest, alongside energy scion Scott Duncan (aged 41), In-N-Out Burger boss Lynsi Snyder (42) and Ernest Garcia III (42), who founded online automobile dealer Carvana in 2012, with funding from his billionaire father, Ernest Garcia II. Of course, even those who inherit fortunes sometimes do a lot with what they are given. Garcia came up with the idea for Carvana and Snyder has run the cult-like fast food joint since 2010.
The remaining six under 40 built their own wealth, through companies like Airbnb (Nathan Blecharczyk, 41) and Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. (Brian Armstrong, 41).
The number of under-40 members on the list continues to dwindle, down from four last year and ten in 2022. Some of the list’s youngsters, like Zuckerberg and Moskovitz, are simply just getting older. Others, like Snap cofounders Evan Spiegel, 34, and Bobby Murphy, 36, have dropped from the ranks as their companies have languished. Then there are the flameouts, like FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, 32, now broke and serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy. With the minimum net worth to make the ranking skyrocketing to record heights, they have mainly been replaced by older billionaires, proving that keeping a spot on The Forbes 400 might be every bit as hard as getting one in the first place.
Here are the 10 youngest members of the 2024 Forbes 400 list, from oldest to youngest.
Net worths are as of September 1, 2024.
Age: 42 | Net worth: $4.6 billion | Source of wealth: Used cars
Garcia cofounded Carvana, an ecommerce platform for buying and selling used cars, in 2012 as a subsidiary of his father’s used car dealer DriveTime. The duo spun Carvana out of DriveTime in a 2017 IPO that raised $225 million. Garcia III is CEO; Garcia II is still the largest shareholder in his son’s company.
Age: 42 | Net worth: $7.3 billion | Source of wealth: In-N-Out Burger
The owner and president of beloved West Coast fast-food chain In-N-Out, Snyder became a billionaire on her 35th birthday, in 2017, when she received the final portion of her stock in the $2.1 billion (estimated sales) business.
Age: 42 | Net worth: $3.8 billion | Source of wealth: OnlyFans
More than 305 million people spent upwards of $6.6 billion last year on his social media subscription site that’s best known for hosting adult content. That growth—and the $1 billion he has paid himself in dividends over the past three years—has helped push Radvinsky, who was born in Ukraine and started his career running porn referral websites, onto The Forbes 400 for the first time.
Age: 41 | Net worth: $8.3 billion | Source of wealth: Pipelines
A 27-year-old Duncan became a billionaire in 2010, following the death of his father, Texas oil tycoon Dan Duncan. He and his three siblings each inherited stakes in the Houston-based energy company Enterprise Products, which owns natural gas processing plants and over 50,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines. Duncan’s 63-year-old sister, Randa Duncan Williams, is the only sibling involved in the company; she serves as non-executive chairman.
Age: 41 | Net worth: $8 billion | Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency
Coinbase stock has increased 123% since last year’s list, more than doubling the fortune of the cryptocurrency exchange’s cofounder. A former Airbnb engineer, he led Coinbase through its 2021 IPO, briefly hitting a peak market capitalization of more than $100 billion.
Age: 41 | Net worth: $7.9 billion | Source of wealth: Airbnb
Blecharczyk is nearly two years younger than his Airbnb cofounders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, who rank as the 12th and 13th youngest on the list. Currently the vacation rental company’s chief strategy officer, Blecharczyk served as Airbnb’s first engineer, coding its original website and pioneering the company’s data science, payment and marketing teams. He’s also an active Airbnb user: He and his wife have hosted hundreds of guests.
Age: 40 | Net worth: $181 billion | Source of wealth: Facebook
Meta has rebounded in a big way from its 2022 nadir, including a 75% jump over the past 12 months. That has added $75 billion to Zuck’s fortune, making him the third-richest American.
Age: 40 | Net worth: $14.3 billion | Source of wealth: Facebook
Moskovitz helped launch Facebook with then-roommate Zuckerberg, who is just eight days older. Besides a stake in Facebook-parent company Meta, he also owns shares of Asana, the workflow software company he started after leaving Facebook in 2008.
Age: 39 | Net worth: $3.8 billion | Source of wealth: Venture capital
Kushner, who married model Karlie Kloss in 2018, started VC firm Thrive Capital, which has an impressive track record of investing in tech startups, including Instagram, Spotify and Slack. He’s also heir to a real estate dynasty run by his father Charles Kushner, then his brother Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump and who served as an advisor in the Trump administration.
Age: 38 | Net worth: $33.9 billion | Source of wealth: Walmart
The youngest member of The Forbes 400 hails from the richest family in America, the heirs of Walmart cofounder Sam Walton (d. 1992), who collectively own nearly half of the retailer’s stock. Walton quietly inherited his wealth after his father, John Walton, died in a plane crash in 2005. Lukas, who survived childhood cancer and who does not work for Walmart, invests in businesses tackling environmental and social challenges and chairs the environmental program committee of the Walton Family Foundation.
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