InJanuary 2025, as it was gearing up to release its Claude 4 chatbot to compete with the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini, AI startup Anthropic revealed it was raising investor funding at a valuation north of $60 billion. The deal instantly made the four-year-old company one of the most valuable artificial intelligence firms on the planet—and made all seven of its cofounders billionaires, catapulting Anthropic into another league of American companies: the billionaire factories.

Most major businesses are lucky to make one billionaire out of their founder. Some are successful enough to put a cofounder or an early investor in the three-comma club as well. A handful have even made an early employee or two super-rich. Then there are the fortunate few mega-firms that have spawned many billionaires. Among America’s 680 self-made billionaires, 54 of them mainly owe their riches to one of just eight companies.

They’re mostly consumer technology businesses. Some—like Anthropic and digital advertising company AppLovin, which boasts eight billionaires—are young upstarts whose stock has been driven through the roof by investors’ AI mania over the past year. Anthropic began 2025 with a reported valuation of $18 billion; in September, the company announced a $13 billion round at a valuation of $183 billion. Shares of AppLovin, meanwhile, are up more than 1,000% since going public on the Nasdaq in 2021, including a 100% jump in 2025, putting the firm’s market capitalization at nearly $250 billion.

Other kingmaker companies are household names, like Meta, Google and Microsoft. These tech giants have already been enriching their founders and major investors over decades of share price growth. Now, with the U.S. stock market at record highs—and with these companies betting big on AI—they largely have more, and richer, billionaires than ever before. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has long been a billionaire, but so too are an early software developer, a former CEO and, as of this year, current CEO Satya Nadella. Meta has made billionaires of Mark Zuckerberg and his cofounders, plus two former execs and three early investors.

No company has produced more U.S. billionaires than Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The search giant has created ten current billionaires since........

© Forbes