ThinkAdvisor has sorted through the 2023 Forbes Real-Time Billionaires ranking to find the youngest billionaires in the United States. We discovered that this year’s members are relative old-timers among the world’s super-rich young people. The youngest Americans are all millennials, whereas the five youngest globally are members of Generation Z.
Clemente Del Vecchio, 19, and his 21-year old brother Luca became billionaires after the death of their father, former EssilorLuxottica chairman Leonardo Del Vecchio, in 2022. Sisters Kim Yung-youn, 19, and Kim Yung-min, 21, of South Korea are billionaires owing to their holdings in the online gaming company Nexon. Kevin David Lehmann, who own half of the German drugstore chain dm, is 21.
Our ranking does not include 35-year-old Rihanna, a superstar on the American music and cosmetics scene whose net worth is $1.4 billion, according to Forbes. Her home country is Barbados.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who at 29 was the youngest billionaire when we compiled this snapshot in 2021, with a fortune of $26.5 billion, faces as much as life in prison following his recent conviction for stealing billions from accounts of customers of his crypto exchange FTX. In 2022, just before his house of cards collapsed, Forbes put his fortune at $17.2 billion, now revised to $0.
Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires wealth-tracking platform provides ongoing updates on the net worth and ranking of each individual confirmed by Forbes to be a billionaire. The value of individuals’ public holdings are updated every 5 minutes when respective stock markets are open. Individuals whose fortunes are significantly tied to private companies have their net worths updated once a day.
In cases where an individual owns a stake in a private company that accounts for 20% or more of his or her net worth, the value of the company is adjusted according to an industry- or region-specific market index provided by FactSet Research Systems when available.
See the accompanying gallery for the 17 youngest U.S. billionaires, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list as of Dec. 6.