Among the world’s billionaires, Johannes von Baumbach, 19, is the youngest

At just 19 years old, Johannes von Baumbach has made headlines as the world’s youngest billionaire.

According to Forbes, his staggering fortune is attributable to him being an heir to Boehringer Ingelheim, the largest privately owned pharmaceutical company in the world.

This pharmaceutical giant, founded in 1885 and headquartered in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, generated €26.8bn in sales last year and employs about 53,000 people globally.

Boehringer Ingelheim is known for producing essential drugs for conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), type 2 diabetes and anticoagulants, and ranks among the top 20 highest-grossing pharmaceutical companies worldwide.

Baumbach and his three siblings — Maximilian, 27, Katharina, 25,  and Franz, 23 — each have an estimated net worth of $5.4bn, thanks to their stake in the family business built over generations.

Despite their immense wealth, details about the siblings’ roles in the company or their plans for the future remain a mystery. True to the family’s corporate philosophy, which is steeped in discretion, little is publicly known about their involvement in the day-to-day operations of Boehringer Ingelheim.

Notably, Johannes himself remains a somewhat elusive figure, with no photographs of the young billionaire available publicly.

According to Forbes the vast majority of billionaire youths are from Europe, with 15 of them making the list. 

Globally, only a few other young billionaires stand out. While many of the richest individuals are well over 50, with most billionaires between the ages of 50 and 79, only a small percentage manage to achieve such wealth before the age of 30.

“Just 12% are under 50. The rarest of all are those who manage to achieve billionaire status by the age of 30,” said Forbes. 

Outside Europe, young billionaires are emerging from places such as South Korea and Brazil, with siblings inheriting fortunes from industries such as online gaming and industrial machinery.

While that is the case, perhaps the most remarkable stories are those of self-made young billionaires such as Australian Ed Craven, a 29-year-old co-founder of the world’s largest crypto-backed online casino, Stake.com, and 28-year-old Alexandr Wang who is a co-founder of AI data annotation unicorn Scale AI.

Wang, whose company labels data used to train AI for large language models such as ChatGPT and self-driving cars, recently reclaimed his spot on the Forbes billionaire list after a funding round valued Scale AI at $13.8bn.

Wang, who cofounded the company in 2016 after dropping out of MIT, now has a 14% stake in the company, which counts Microsoft, General Motors and Meta as clients.

The latest Forbes list highlights a historic milestone, which is that there are more US dollar billionaires than ever before, with 3,028 individuals on the list.

This is an increase of 247 from the previous year and more than five times more than the 587 recorded two decades ago in 2005.

Elon Musk remains at the top with an estimated net worth of $345bn, followed by Mark Zuckerberg with $216bn and Jeff Bezos with $215bn.

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