Tech billionaires: unprecedented wealth, power, and responsibility

On the family front, a significant number of succession plans were executed in 2025. Wealth transfers rose sharply, with 91 heirs worldwide inheriting a record $297.8bn, up 36% from last year. Today, around 860 multigenerational billionaires manage assets totalling $4.7tn, up from 805 individuals overseeing $4.1tn the previous year.

Many billionaires also relocated during the past year. Around 36% reported having moved at least once in 2025, driven by factors such as improved quality of life, major geopolitical concerns, and more efficient tax planning. Several countries are making such transitions easier for the ultra-wealthy. For example, it recently became much easier for wealthy Americans to move to New Zealand. A variety of other 'golden visa' schemes also await billionaires considering international moves in 2026.

A new generation

By and large, today's billionaires' fortunes are no longer anchored in physical products or property. Rather, their money is based on digital assets built not out of bricks and mortar but out of software, processors, algorithms, and user data. Jensen Huang is a prime example: Nvidia's value is mainly based on its intellectual property. Self-made entrepreneurs like Huang represent nearly 70% of new billionaires. Some are coders who founded start-ups that rode the wave in AI, cloud computing, and data analytics.

In the life sciences, billionaire pioneers include Ben Lamm, whose ventures include not only mobile apps, digital gaming, and machine learning, but also biosciences, plastic degradation, biobanking, and even genetic engineering to combat extinction. In the food and consumer sectors, brothers Zhang Hongchao and Zhang Hongfu (founders of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea) have created a Chinese success story.

By contrast, others billionaires have inherited their fortunes, including 15 people from German pharmaceutical dynasties, reflecting a global landscape where wealth continues to oscillate between innovation-driven capital and family inheritance. Yet the prevailing trend unmistakably points to digital innovation as the most powerful force shaping wealth in the 21st century. This technological surge has increased billionaire numbers and reshaped the structure of the global economy.

Investors in AI stocks have recently logged gains of around 25% per year, creating a class of tech winners, but at the same time widening the divide between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, as an increasing share of profits now originates from financial markets rather than physical production. A knowledge economy is taking shape, one in which data and technical expertise are the prime assets of the era, eclipsing traditional capital and raw materials as the foundation of economic power.

Different kinds of assets

Technology typically does not depend on finite physical resources, but on innovation and the ability to transform ideas into high-value products. With each new algorithm or breakthrough in digital infrastructure, fresh economic opportunities emerge, driving productivity and creating entirely new markets. This form of wealth showcases humanity's capacity to expand its potential beyond the traditional limits of energy, minerals, agriculture, and heavy industry. It fosters rapid growth in high-value employment, stimulates investment in scientific research, and offers ambitious economies the chance to bypass lengthy phases of industrial development.

There are downsides, however. Profits rooted in digital platforms and AI can also render economies more volatile. Simple software changes, or the dominance of a single company, can reshape entire markets overnight. This amplifies the threat of monopolies, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few. Moreover, the data- and algorithm-driven nature of this new wealth raises big questions around privacy, transparency, and the manipulation of information, spurring calls for a careful balance between innovating for wealth creation and protecting society.

Although today's tech and AI billionaires are rising to the top of the global wealth pyramid at an unprecedented pace, their immense digital fortunes come at a cost, with challenges that straddle politics, economics, security, the environment, and ethics, not least because AI is so energy-intensive. This new billionaire class suddenly find themselves with overwhelming responsibilities, as their products and services redefining the very concept of influence in the digital age.

Obstacles ahead

Another concern is of an AI bubble, as some notable investors warn of. Digital wealth is closely tied to the market valuation of tech stocks, but the sector is highly sensitive to interest rate shifts, changes in investor sentiment, and even minor regulatory decisions. While traditional wealth was underpinned by physical assets or natural resources, tech fortunes rely more on future expectations than on tangible holdings. A digital billionaire may see their fortune double one year and disappear the next, perhaps after a flawed software update or a competitor unveiling a superior algorithm.

Digital billionaires now face growing social and political pressure due to the inherently sensitive nature of their wealth. AI, big data, and digital services have become integral to national security, placing tech moguls firmly within the scope of government regulation and legal oversight. Authorities are imposing stricter controls on privacy, data governance, anti-monopoly measures, and the legal limits of AI, any of which can alter the trajectory of companies and the fortunes of their founders.

Public awareness of technology's influence on everyday life has intensified, leaving tech billionaires increasingly exposed to criticism and accusations of monopolising the future, hoarding access to knowledge, or swaying democratic processes through digital platforms. As a result, the tech billionaire is no longer just a successful entrepreneur, but an unofficial political actor, monitored by governments and scrutinised by society.

In part, this comes from AI being no longer just an economic instrument, but a societal force reshaping employment, work, privacy, even human relationships. As automation and algorithms replace more and more human roles, the responsibilities of tech billionaires in managing this transition becomes ever greater, enveloping digital wealth in a moral complexity that traditional fortunes never encountered. In the age of Rockefeller, the world's richest were often responsible for factories, employees, and wages. The digital billionaire, by contrast, is responsible for the future of humanity. They are being compensated accordingly.