Meet the Gen Z founders building billion-dollar companies before their 30th birthdays

Artificial intelligence, creator-led brands and enterprise software are defining the next generation of entrepreneurs. From AI-powered recruitment to video creation and customer service, these young founders are redefining what success looks like under 30.

Brendan Foody, Surya Midha and Adarsh Hiremath co-founded Mercor, an AI-powered recruitment platform matching companies with talent. They left their university programmes to focus on the business and became some of the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

Aidan Gomez left his Oxford PhD programme to build Cohere, an enterprise AI solutions company. Before becoming its CEO, he had already helped reshape artificial intelligence itself — one of the field's most consequential early contributors.

Demi Guo co-founded Pika to make AI-powered video creation accessible after finding existing tools too difficult to use. She left Stanford's PhD programme to build it, and Pika has since raised millions and become one of the leading names in AI video generation.

Alexandr Wang founded Scale AI after leaving MIT in his first year. The company became a major player in AI infrastructure before Meta acquired a significant stake. Wang now serves as Meta's Chief AI Officer overseeing key artificial intelligence initiatives.

Braden Ream built Voiceflow to enable companies to design AI-powered assistants without extensive coding, serving thousands of businesses worldwide. Jesse Zhang launched Decagon to automate customer service using AI — its agents now serve Duolingo, Notion and Hertz.

Erifili Gourani turned a freelance social media career into The Z Link, a Gen Z-run marketing agency serving global brands. Swish Goswami built Surf, a browser extension that rewards users for sharing browsing data — offering transparency over traditional data collection.