“In some ways I really think of myself as a generalist… if you look through my background, you would [say], ‘what is this lady actually good at?’ Right? ‘She doesn’t have a law degree. She’s not a computer scientist,’” says Daniela Amodei, president and cofounder of Anthropic, in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in May.
“But the ability to be curious, [to] learn across a lot of disciplines and to have a strong foundation of wanting to have impact, regardless of the area that you’re working in, I think that is an underrated quality.”
That ethos has worked for Amodei, who at 38 is arguably the most powerful woman in AI—and now suddenly the second-richest self-made woman in America. Thanks to Anthropic’s recent mega funding round, which raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, the English literature graduate from University of Santa Cruz is now worth an estimated $15.5 billion, up nearly 13-fold from $1.2 billion a year ago.
It also helped shape the ethos of the AI giant that she started with her brother Dario and five others after all seven left OpenAI in December 2020. Back when the company was worth just $183 billion, the Anthropic cofounders all announced plans to eventually give away 80% of their wealth. “Look, we are going to be a commercial entity. We think there’s going to be a lot of economic value that’s going to be created by artificial intelligence, but it’s really important to us that we do this the right way,” she says during the Stanford interview. “I would say for this generation… this concept that being in business doesn’t have to be in tension with doing good.”
Many others on Forbes annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women would undoubtedly agree. From Oprah Winfrey to Sara Blakely, the nation’s most successful female billionaires have long pushed back on simply being money-making machines. “I never had any personal desire to be a wealthy billionaire living lavishly,” wrote Judy Faulkner, the founder of Epic Systems and No. 3 on Forbes’ 2026 list of America’s most successful self-made women, in her Giving Pledge letter in 2015. “My goal in pledging 99% of my assets to philanthropy is to help others with roots—food, warmth, shelter, healthcare, education—so they too can have wings.”
There’s no doubt the fortunes of these entrepreneurial women have taken flight as a record 43 self-made billionaire queens of capitalism made the list, up from 38 a year ago, despite the passing of two legendary women, Gap cofounder Doris Fisher (d. May 2026 at age 94) and Bio-Rad Laboratories’ Alice Schwartz (d. September 2025, at age 99).
Among the new billionaires: Beyonce Knowles-Carter, who climbs into the ranks on the back of her 2025 Cowboy Carter Tour, which grossed more than $450 million in ticket sales and merchandise; and Caryn Seidman-Becker who runs Clear Secure, an ID tech outfit used for security checkpoints at airports and, increasingly, at stadiums and doctors’ offices. Nvidia’s CFO, Colette Kress also vaults into the three comma-club, thanks to the AI boom. The Cisco veteran reportedly joined Nvidia from the endorsement of her two sons—avid video gamers who were familiar with Nvidia’s gaming chips.
Brazilian-born former ballerina, Luana Lopes Lara, who cofounded fast growing prediction market firm Kalshi, makes her debut on the self-made women list as well. The MIT graduate, who spent college summers working for Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities, became the youngest self-made billionaire in December, at age 29, when New York-based Kalshi raised $1 billion money at an $11 billion valuation. Now 30, she’s worth $2.6 billion, thanks to a $22 billion funding round in May.
Four-fifths of the women on this year’s billionaires-only list are richer than a year ago, and nearly half hail from the tech industry. The richest self-made woman for the ninth year in a row—Diane Hendricks, cofounder of building supplies wholesaler ABC Supply—is one of just five whose fortune dropped in the past 12 months. Still, she is $6.2 billion richer than her runner up, Amodei, who moves up from No. 28 last year.
The combined net worth of these entrepreneurs, executives and celebrities stands at a record $166.3 billion. The top ten account for $96 billion of that sum; that’s more than triple the total worth of the top ten on our inaugural list in 2015—roughly on par with the 333% return of the S&P over the same period.
While these self-made stars have undoubtedly come far—there were only 12 women billionaires on our inaugural list in 2015—their numbers still pale in comparison to their male counterparts. In the U.S. alone, 700 men are self-made billionaires, worth a collective $6.7 trillion. To put that figure into perspective, the nation’s most successful women account for just 2.4% of America’s self-made fortunes.
Still, there’s reason to be optimistic: there are more women billionaires with self-made fortunes possessing more wealth, more sway and more opportunities than at any other time in American history.
Methodology
To compile net worths, Forbes valued assets including stakes in public companies using stock prices from June 1, 2026. We valued private companies by consulting with outside experts and conservatively comparing them with their public counterparts. We attempted to vet numbers with all list entrants. Some cooperated, others didn’t. For the first time since Forbes first launched its list of most successful self-made women, only those worth $1 billion or more made the cut. That’s why you won’t see familiar faces like Dolly Parton, Kylie Jenner or Selena Gomez in the ranks. To be eligible for the list, women also had to have substantially made their own fortunes in the U.S. and/or be permanent residents. While none inherited their wealth, some have climbed farther and overcame more obstacles. To measure just how far some have come, women are given a self-made score of 6 (hired hand) to 10 (rags-to-riches entrepreneur). Ages are as of June 3, 2026. For more information, including details on the self-made scores, see forbes.com/self-made-women.
