John Mackey co-founded Whole Foods Market in 1980, led it as CEO until 2022, and helped lead the natural food movement.
Robert F. Smith won a Bell Labs internship by calling every Monday for five months, then founded Vista Equity Partners. In 2020 he settled a $139 million tax fraud case.
Whitney Wolfe Herd helped launch Tinder, then founded Bumble and took it public in 2021 at age 31, becoming the world's youngest female billionaire.
Drew Houston co-founded Dropbox in 2007 with MIT classmate Arash Ferdowsi, took it public in 2018 and sits on the board of Meta Platforms.
From PayPal co-founder to the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has built companies spanning electric vehicles, rockets, AI and brain-computer interfaces. He became the first trillionaire on paper at the June 2026 SpaceX IPO.
