The founders of some of the world’s most successful startups have been young: Think Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom were just 19 when they launched their ventures.
But with the rise of billion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) startups comes a new trend: their founders, on average, appear to be getting younger.
A new report released by global early-stage venture capital firm Antler, found that the age of founders of AI unicorns has fallen from a peak age of 40 in 2021 to 29-years-old in 2024. Antler analyzed 1,629 unicorns and 3,512 founders globally for this report.
However, in other industries, founder age is actually rising. In 2014, the average unicorn founder was 30 at the time of launch, compared with 34 for those who reached unicorn status between 2022 and 2024.
Several AI startups with young founders have been in the spotlight in the past year. Alexandr Wang, co-founder of $29 billion AI data labelling company Scale AI, is only 29-years-old. Wang was poached by Meta in June, in a $14.3 billion deal with the startup, to head up the tech giant’s new AI research unit called TBD Labs.
