Khaberni - The founders of some of the most successful startups in the world were young, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who were only 19 years old when they launched their projects.
However, with the ascent of billion-dollar emerging artificial intelligence companies, a new trend is emerging, with the average age of their founders seemingly decreasing.
A new report by the global venture capital firm "Antler," specializing in early stages, revealed that the average age of founders of giant artificial intelligence companies dropped from a peak of 40 years in 2021 to 29 years in 2024.
Antler analyzed data from 1,629 giant companies and 3,512 founders globally to prepare this report.
Nevertheless, in other sectors, the average age of the founders is increasing. In 2014, the average age of founders of giant startups (known as "unicorns") was 30 years at launch compared to 34 years for companies that reached this level between 2022 and 2024.
Many artificial intelligence startups, founded by young people, have emerged over the past year.
For instance, Alexander Wang, the co-founder of Scale AI specializing in artificial intelligence data classification valued at $29 billion, is only 29 years old.
He was attracted by the company Meta in June, in a deal worth $14.3 billion, to head the new artificial intelligence research unit of the tech giant, named TBD Labs.
In fact, Meta's previous generative artificial intelligence team, which was led by the 65-year-old artificial intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun, was reorganized after their Llama4 artificial intelligence model failed to perform as hoped.
This saw Wang taking over as director from LeCun, which indicated Zuckerberg's desire to appoint a more daring and entrepreneurial leader in artificial intelligence to enable Meta to make faster progress in this area.
At the same time, Brendan Vodi, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Medha, all 22 years old, co-founded Merqur, an artificial intelligence-powered recruitment and talent discovery platform recently valued at over $10 billion.
Anesphere, an artificial intelligence-supported programming and development platform valued at over a billion dollars, is also headed by youth in their twenties.
Fredtjof Berger, the co-founder and CEO of business at Antler, told CNBC Make It that the essential qualities of founders have shifted to the ability to "move fast and experiment with new ideas" and "continuous development and improvement."
Berger said, "Experimentation has perhaps become now more important, while there are other things that are still important but are less so now, such as working in a particular field for a long period or learning traditional ways of thinking in scaling a new company."
Institutional experience is "less important"
Fredtjof explained that the expectations related to industry experience among founders have become less important than entrepreneurship and innovation.
He said, "I believe, after thinking about this, that the desire and ability to experiment in the age of artificial intelligence may be more important than traditional institutional experience or tenure in companies."
Fredtjof added that "extensive experience in building traditional companies" is "less important," and might even be counterproductive, as it does not think from scratch, according to him.
He added, "I think having technical familiarity with the latest emerging and advanced technologies can sometimes be beneficial because this is what you recently learned in your training."
In fact, the Antler report found that artificial intelligence startups grow two years faster than all other sectors, reaching billionaire company status within an average of 4.7 years.
Examples of fast-growing startups in artificial intelligence in 2025 include Mistral, Loveable, and Sono AI.
As Zuckerberg's own example proves, executing a bold idea in a university dorm room can lead to spectacular success.
Berger said, "He was very young, and he adapted and evolved remarkably, and he now leads one of the largest companies in the world."
The venture capital firm Leonis released its "Leonis AI 100" report in November, which also found that the average age of founders of emerging artificial intelligence companies was 29 years at founding.
Most founders are in their mid to late twenties, and they often come directly from academic backgrounds or research laboratories rather than working in large companies.
Berger noted that while youth in their twenties have qualities that allow companies to grow rapidly, the leadership may change as the company matures.
He added, "It's not new for early or young founders to start companies, but this does not guarantee that all those who are currently creating giant companies will be the ones leading those companies within five to ten years."
