Zuckerberg leads world’s richest under-40s in Hurun’s annual ranking of billionaires

Tech and social media moguls from the US and China dominated the list of the world’s wealthiest self-made billionaires  who are under 40 years old, The South China Morning Post reports, citing Hurun Research Institute.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 36, topped the list for the sixth straight year, with his net worth increasing 20 per cent over the past 12 months to US$101 billion. Zhang Yiming, the 38-year old founder of ByteDance, which operates short-video app sensation TikTok, came in second after boosting his wealth by 291 per cent to US$54 billion.

The duo led a list of 79 self-made billionaire-entrepreneurs under the age of 40 globally, 26 more than last year. Their combined wealth rose 79 per cent last year to 3.4 trillion yuan (US$519.3 billion), according to Hurun. That is almost equivalent in size to the economy of China’s capital, at 3.6 trillion yuan.

Much of the wealth came on the back of a global stock market rally as prices surged in the US and broader Asian markets. The S&P 500 Index rose 84.5 per cent through April 12, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 69 per cent from their pandemic-hit lows on March 23 last year, generating an extra US$27.5 trillion in equity wealth.