Charles Schwab pioneered discount stock brokerage in 1975 and built the largest discount securities dealer in the United States.
Marc Andreessen co-authored Mosaic, the first web browser to show inline images, co-founded Netscape and later the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
J.P. Morgan financed the creation of U.S. Steel, General Electric and International Harvester and, during the Panic of 1907, organized the coalition of financiers that saved the US monetary system.
Stephen Schwarzman started with a lawn-mowing business at 14 and, in 1985, co-founded Blackstone with Peter Peterson, growing it into one of the world's largest private equity firms.
Michael Bloomberg founded Bloomberg L.P. in 1981 around the Bloomberg Terminal, served three terms as mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013 and has given away $24.5 billion.
Ken Griffin ran a mail-order software firm from his high-school bedroom and now owns 80 percent of Citadel, one of the world's largest hedge funds. He made the largest private art purchase on record in 2015.
Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, launched Palantir and Founders Fund, and became Facebook's first outside investor in 2004 with a $500,000 stake for 10.2 percent.
Jamie Dimon has led JPMorgan Chase as CEO since 2005 and chairman since 2006, after rising through American Express, Travelers, Citigroup and Bank One.
Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter and the payments company Block (Square, Cash App), and later the decentralized social network Bluesky. He is a St. Louis native and NYU dropout.
Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway from a failing textile mill into one of the world's leading conglomerates, guided by value investing. The 'Oracle of Omaha' has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune.
For three years he traded shares by day and worked night shifts at a call centre to fund it. The brokerage he later built with his brother took no outside money at all — and now does ₹8,847 crore a year, wholly owned by the family.
He started in a call centre, trading equities on the side. Twenty years on he co-owns Zerodha, runs an asset manager and a venture fund, hosts a podcast that has had Modi, Bill Gates and Elon Musk on it — and has pledged away half his wealth.
