is growing up—and so are the entrepreneurs who are driving the white-hot industry. As investments flow in by the trillions, in 2025, it seems every company, big or small, wants to become an AI company. The opportunities are plenty, but new startup founders must find innovative ways to integrate the technology into applications and prove themselves in a fiercely competitive—and frothy—market.
The 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 AI cohort is an elite collection of young visionaries building machine learning, attracting customers and investors in droves. Jesse Zhang, 28, is CEO and cofounder of Decagon, which makes AI agents for customer service tasks. He’s a new entrant in a historically crowded market. But Zhang has managed to snag reputed customers like Duolingo, Hertz and ClassPass and raise about $255 million from big-name backers including Andreessen Horowitz and Accel.
Other young entrepreneurs are building fast-growing startups in sleepy industries like legal, accounting and insurance. Take, Max Junestrand, 26, the cofounder and CEO of Legora (valuation $1.8 billion), who started the legal tech company two years ago and now touts 300 law firms as customers of its AI software that handles gruntwork like document reviews and drafting for lawyers. Stanford dropouts David Yue and Finsam Samson (both 24) are building an AI-powered tool to help accountants keep up with global regulations. (They’re also training the next generation of tax pros how to adopt AI in their jobs.) Alejandrina Gonzalez Reyes, 28, is building an AI receptionist for insurance agencies.
