THE NEW BILLIONAIRES

THE PAST YEAR WAS THE SECOND-BEST EVER FOR BILLIONAIRE CREATION, BEHIND ONLY THE 2021 PANDEMIC REBOUND. IN ALL, 390 FRESH FACES FROM 40 COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES, WORTH A COLLECTIVE $755 BILLION, JOINED THE RANKS. A FEW NOTABLES:

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BEYONCÉ KNOWLES-CARTER

$1 bil • Music • U.S.

She first became famous as a member of Destiny’s Child in the late 1990s, but Beyoncé really started getting rich as a solo superstar in 2010, when she founded Parkwood Entertainment to take control of nearly every aspect of her career. The company—named for the Houston street on which she grew up—produces all her music, documentaries and concerts, fronting most of the production costs to capture more of the back end. It has paid off enormously. Forbes estimates her 2023 Renaissance tour grossed nearly $600 million and her 2025 Cowboy Carter tour more than $400 million. Beyoncé, whose husband, Jay-Z, is separately worth $2.8 billion, has also expanded into hair care (with Cécred) and whiskey (SirDavis).

LIU DEBING

$9.1 bil • AI • China

The chairman of OpenAI’s blacklisted Chinese challenger Zhipu, which operates a ChatGPT-like service called Z.ai, jumped into the ranks after the firm’s January IPO in Hong Kong. Cofounded by Liu in 2019, Zhipu’s early investors included Alibaba, Tencent and Chinese government funds.

DANEL NADLER

$7.6 bil • AI software • U.S.

More than 758,000 physicians use his OpenEvidence, a “ChatGPT for doctors” that scans millions of peer-reviewed publications to help find the best medical answers fast. Nadler, a Harvard Ph.D. who also sold an AI analytics company to S&P Global in 2018 for $700 million in cash and stock, owns around 60% of OpenEvidence, which raised at a $12 billion valuation in January.

LIN TSUNG-CHI

$5.1 bil • Furniture rails • Taiwan