San Francisco, USA. Yonhap News. 

A significant number of new billionaires are emerging from AI startups, which have attracted enormous funding thanks to the rapid growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

CNBC News reported on the 10th (local time), citing market research firm CB Insights, that there are currently 498 'unicorn companies' in the AI industry, meaning privately held startups valued at over $1 billion, and the total valuation of these companies reaches $2.7 trillion.

100 AI unicorn companies were founded after 2023, and there are over 1,300 AI startups with valuations exceeding $100 million.

CNBC explained that as the stock prices of AI-related listed companies such as Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft soar, the valuations of AI startups are also skyrocketing, leading to the rise of a new generation of billionaires.

Bloomberg estimated in March that at least 15 billionaires have emerged from the top 1-4 ranked privately held AI companies by valuation.

Among the recently highlighted AI startups is 'Thinking Machine Labs,' founded in February by Mira Murati, formerly of OpenAI, with a valuation of $12 billion.

The current valuation of another AI startup, Anthropic, has increased to nearly three times its valuation in March, reaching $170 billion.

As a result, the company's CEO, Dario Amodei, and the other six co-founders are highly likely to have become billionaires.

The valuation of Anysphere is also estimated to be between $18 billion and $20 billion, suggesting that its 25-year-old CEO, Michael Truell, has likely joined the ranks of billionaires.

The boom in these AI startups has been concentrated in San Francisco.

Silicon Valley companies raised over $35 billion in venture capital last year.

San Francisco currently has 82 billionaires, more than New York's 66.

The number of millionaires in the 'Bay Area' along the coast of San Francisco has doubled in the past decade, while the number of millionaires in New York increased by 45% during the same period.

Yonhap News