This year, entrepreneurs working on the front lines of the real economy took the spots once held by instant rich people from coins and IT platforms during the pandemic. From a biotech entrepreneur who wants to revive the extinct mammoth to Chinese brothers selling milk tea for 1,000 won a cup, those with tangible business models rewrote the "formula of wealth."
On the 4th (local time), Switzerland's UBS released the Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025, which said that as of April this year there were 2,919 billionaires worldwide with asset of $1 billion (about 1.475 trillion won) or more. That was up 8.8% from a year earlier. Their total assets rose 13% from a year earlier to $15.8 trillion (about 2,330 trillion won).
Of the 2,919 billionaires, 287 people (9.8%) were newly added to the list this year. It was the largest number in four years since 2021, when asset price bubbles peaked due to COVID-19 stimulus. In 2021, many people became billionaires by leveraging financial engineering on the back of increased liquidity (funds). This year, by contrast, those with concrete real-economy business models—such as in biotech, consumer goods, infrastructure, and energy—rose in large numbers.
UBS highlighted Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, as a notable case. Colossal Biosciences is a corporations that restores extinct animals using gene-editing technology. The corporations said it would restore the extinct mammoth and release it into the Arctic tundra by 2028. Projects to revive the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger are also underway. Lamm drew massive investments by pulling into the real world technologies that once felt like far-fetched settings from science fiction (SF) films.
Cutting-edge technology was not the only answer. Chinese brothers Zhang Hongqiao and Zhang Hongfu amassed trillion-level wealth with a classic low-margin, high-volume management approach. Their low-cost bubble tea and ice cream chain Mixue·蜜雪冰城 (Mixuebingcheng) has more than 36,000 stores in China alone. They sell tens of billions of cups of drinks priced around 1,000 won per cup every year. In March, they listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange (IPO) and both became billionaires. UBS said, "Innovation in consumer goods and distribution has proven to remain a powerful source of wealth."
Michael Dorrell, founder of infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak, rode the wave of artificial intelligence (AI). Massive power and data centers are essential to run AI. Stonepeak is a corporations that focuses on investing in the physical infrastructure of the AI era, such as data centers and telecom towers. Rather than jumping into the fierce AI software race, Dorrell dominated the infrastructure and reaped enormous revenue.
The energy landscape reshaped after the war in Ukraine also produced new tycoons. U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Venture Global saw its corporate value soar vertically as demand for U.S. LNG surged amid the energy security crisis. Co-founders Bob Pender and Mike Sabel became billionaires for the first time this year on that basis.
Beyond self-made tycoons like these, 91 people became billionaires through inheritance this year. The money they inherited totaled $297.8 billion (about 440 trillion won). That was the largest amount since the first report in 2015. Although the number of self-made rich was larger at 287, the average asset growth per inherited-wealth billionaire was steeper. UBS called this the "Great Wealth Transfer."
According to the report, about $6.9 trillion (about 10,700 trillion won) in assets is expected to transfer worldwide by 2040. UBS predicted that at least $5.9 trillion (about 8,700 trillion won), or 85% of that, will be inherited by billionaires' children. By region, the United States had the largest children's inheritance assets held by wealthy families. India, France, Germany and Switzerland followed.
Experts said that as the assets accumulated by billionaire founders move en masse to their children's generation, a new trend is forming in capital markets. In an in-depth survey of 87 billionaires worldwide by UBS, 82% of those with children said, "We want our children to have the skills and values to succeed independently rather than rely on inherited wealth." Only 43% said they wanted their children to take over and run the family business.
Second-generation heirs to massive wealth are no longer satisfied with simply inheriting and running their father's company as in the past. They are more interested in private equity (PE), impact investing, or founding their own tech startups than in existing family businesses. According to the report, a virtuous cycle is taking place in which the children's generation uses the old money built by their parents as seed capital for new businesses. This suggests a greater likelihood that global capital will move from traditional industries like manufacturing to new innovation fields.
Benjamin Cavalli, UBS global head of strategy for the institutional sector in asset management, said, "Because of globalization and rapid disruptive innovation, the guarantee that existing businesses will last forever has disappeared," and noted, "As professional management becomes the norm, families value building resilience and adaptability in their children rather than having them take specific roles."