Artificial intelligence dominated headlines, investments, and wealth creation in 2025 like no other sector, transforming entrepreneurs into billionaires at an unprecedented pace and solidifying AI’s role in everyday work and life.

According to Forbes, more than 50 new billionaires emerged from the AI ecosystem this year, driven by explosive valuations, massive funding rounds exceeding $200 billion globally, which captured 50% of all venture capital, up 16% from 2024 per Crunchbase, and infrastructure commitments rivaling national budgets. The year kicked off with a shockwave in January when Chinese startup DeepSeek released an open-source large language model trained with dramatically less compute than U.S. counterparts, sending ripples through markets and instantly elevating founder Liang Wenfeng to billionaire status with an estimated net worth of $11.5 billion.

U.S. frontrunner Anthropic, developer of the Claude model family, raised $3.5 billion early in the year at a $61.5 billion valuation, propelling all seven cofounders—including siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei—into the billionaire ranks for the first time. The company went on to secure a total of $16.5 billion in funding across rounds, culminating in a September valuation of $183 billion.

Infrastructure became the year’s defining theme. In January, President Donald Trump announced the $500 billion Stargate data center initiative involving OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle—sparking a cascade of commitments from tech giants. Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft each pledged upwards of $65 billion toward AI compute facilities, fueling a data center construction frenzy that minted over a dozen new billionaires among suppliers and enablers.

Semiconductor networking firm Astera Labs saw its cofounders enter billionaire territory amid surging demand for high-bandwidth interconnects. Data center real estate player Fermi and Korean manufacturers ISU Petasys (chips) and Sanil Electric (transformers) similarly benefited from hyperscaler buildouts. Cloud provider CoreWeave, backed by Nvidia, achieved multibillion-dollar status, enriching its founders through explosive growth in GPU cloud services.

The talent and data wars intensified. In June, Meta acquired a 49% stake in data labeling leader Scale AI for over $14 billion, valuing the company at approximately $29 billion. The deal appointed 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang—already a billionaire since 2022—as Meta’s chief AI officer, while briefly making cofounder Lucy Guo (31, departed 2018 but retained equity) the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at $1.4 billion.

Rivals filled the vacuum: Surge AI founder Edwin Chen reached an estimated $18 billion net worth via his 75% stake in the company, which hit a $24 billion valuation on $1.2 billion in 2024 revenue. Data labeling startup Mercor soared to $10 billion in October after a $250 million round, turning its three 22-year-old cofounders into the youngest self-made billionaires ever, each worth around $2.2 billion.

Multimodal AI captured imaginations in September with OpenAI’s Sora 2 launch, flooding social media with hyper-realistic generated videos and images. Billions flowed into image, video, and audio startups, notably ElevenLabs, whose AI voice synthesis platform raised $100 million at a $6.6 billion valuation in October, minting billionaires out of cofounders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski.

Workplace adoption accelerated dramatically: Gallup surveys showed weekly AI usage doubling from 11% in 2023 to 23% in 2025, with even higher penetration among developers. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella—himself newly minted a billionaire through stock performance—revealed up to 30% of the company’s code was AI-generated. Coding tool Cursor from Anysphere reached a $29 billion valuation in November, creating four new billionaire cofounders.

Companies heavily leveraging AI, including video game developer Paper Games, translation software firm TransPerfect, and Chinese robotics maker Orbbec, propelled their founders into the billionaire ranks. As AI permeates industries from software to manufacturing, 2025’s wealth creation wave, fueled by unprecedented capital concentration and technological breakthroughs, marks the sector’s transition from hype to economic powerhouse. It has reshaped global billionaire lists and is expected to set the stage for even greater transformations ahead.

Nigeria’s broadband penetration crossed the 50% threshold for the first time in November 2025, reaching 50.58%—a historic milestone reflecting gradual improvements in digital infrastructure amid economic challenges.

However, this achievement underscores the country’s failure to meet the ambitious 70% target outlined in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) 2020-2025, which expires at the end of December 2025.

The shortfall highlights persistent structural barriers, including infrastructure deficits, regulatory hurdles, and economic pressures, despite concerted efforts to expand connectivity in Africa’s most populous nation. According to the latest industry statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on December 24, 2025, broadband subscriptions—defined as connections offering minimum speeds of 1.5 Mbps under the NBP—totaled 109.6 million in November, up from October’s figures and representing a 0.69 percentage point monthly gain.

Year-to-date growth stands at 6.15 percentage points, rising from 44.43% at the end of 2024, when broadband connections were approximately 91.5 million.

Total internet subscriptions, encompassing 3G, 4G, and emerging 5G, reached 144.7 million, a slight increase from 142.6 million in October.

Active voice subscriptions hit 177.4 million, with teledensity at 81.84% based on a population estimate of 216.7 million.

Market leadership remains concentrated among the “Big Four” operators.

MTN and Airtel’s dominance is driven by aggressive 4G/5G rollouts, with MTN launching commercial 5G in 28 cities and Airtel in over 20 states. Globacom’s fiber-optic backbone (Glo 1 submarine cable) supports its fixed broadband push, while 9mobile struggles post-rebranding and ownership changes.

While the 50% crossing—achieved two years after the NBP’s interim 50% goal for 2023—signals progress driven by mobile network expansions, competitive data bundles, and initiatives like the National Broadband Alliance for Nigeria (NBAN) launched in February 2025, stakeholders lament persistent structural barriers.

Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), attributed slow rollout to unresolved issues like multiple taxation (up to 40 levies per state), exorbitant right-of-way (RoW) fees (e.g., N145 per meter in some states despite federal waivers), and hidden levies, including education taxes, highway charges, imposed despite official waivers.

Additional challenges include infrastructure vandalism (19,000 fiber cuts reported in 2025, averaging 30-43 daily), unreliable power supply forcing diesel dependency (costing operators N500 billion annually in fuel), spectrum scarcity delaying 5G rollout, weak corporate governance, and SIM-NIN linkage mandates causing a 10-15 million subscriber drop in early 2025.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecoms has plummeted (239% drop in 2023, continuing into 2025) due to forex shortages, naira devaluation (from N460/$ in 2023 to N1,600/$ in 2025), and policy instability.

The NBP 2020-2025, developed by ICT experts and approved in March 2020, set bold targets to bridge the digital divide:

• 70% penetration by 2025 (missed; current 50.58%).
• Minimum speeds: 25 Mbps urban, 10 Mbps rural (partial progress; average 15-20 Mbps in cities).
• 50% by 2023 (delayed to 2025).
• At least one smartphone assembly plant by 2023 (unrealized; reliance on imports; cheapest 4G devices >N100,000 vs. target N18,000).
• 70% 4G subscriptions by 2023 (missed; now 51.99%; 5G at 3.6%).
• Investment: $3.5-5 billion needed; actual inflows fell short due to economic headwinds.

Progress has been uneven: From 37.8% in 2020 to 50.58% in 2025, driven by 4G coverage reaching 80% of the population and fiber optic expansion—over 50,000 km laid.

Initiatives like NBAN of February 2025 promote infrastructure sharing to cut costs, while NCC’s approval for 4,000 new towers in 2025 aims to extend coverage to underserved rural areas, where penetration lags at ~30%.

Economically, broadband penetration is pivotal: A 10% increase correlates with 2% GDP growth, according to World Bank estimates, fueling sectors like fintech, e-commerce, and edtech.

Google’s 2025 report projects $1.1 billion higher GDP from penetration gains, enabling innovation, productivity, and digital inclusion—critical for Nigeria’s young population with 18 years median age.

Yet, the shortfall risks exacerbating inequality: Urban areas (e.g., Lagos at 65%) advance, while rural North lags (20-30%), hindering poverty reduction and SDG goals. As the NBP sunsets, focus shifts to a successor—potentially NBP 2026-2030—emphasizing fiber inland with 120,000 km target, 5G acceleration with spectrum auctions in Q1 2026, public-private partnerships, and affordability subsidies.

With Africa’s largest population, Nigeria’s trajectory is expected to influence regional digital ambitions—balancing incremental gains against the urgency for transformative infrastructure investment without succumbing to fiscal constraints.

China’s commerce ministry has said Beijing wants companies involved in the restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. operations to reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance the interests of all parties.

This underscores its first substantive public comment as a long-negotiated deal to avert a U.S. ban on the app moves toward completion.

The remarks come weeks after TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, quietly signed binding agreements to hand over control of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an Oracle-led consortium, a breakthrough aimed at ending years of regulatory limbo and intense political pressure in Washington. Despite the significance of the transaction, Beijing has so far remained largely mum on the details of the deal, underscoring the sensitivity of the arrangement for Chinese authorities.

Speaking at a regular press conference on Thursday, commerce ministry spokesperson He Yongqian said China’s position was consistent.

“The Chinese government would like to see companies reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance the interests of all parties,” she said, when asked directly about the TikTok handover.

He added that Beijing expects reciprocal goodwill from Washington. “It is hoped that the U.S. side will work with China in the same direction, earnestly fulfill its corresponding commitments, and provide a fair, open, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for the continuous and stable operation of Chinese enterprises in the United States,” she said.

The deal, brokered earlier this month after months of renewed negotiations, would see control of TikTok’s U.S. business transferred to a new entity majority-owned and governed by U.S. investors. Oracle, which already hosts TikTok’s U.S. user data under a long-running data security partnership, is expected to take a central role in overseeing data storage, security architecture, and compliance. Other U.S.-based financial investors are also part of the consortium, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Under the terms agreed so far, ByteDance would retain a minority, non-controlling stake in the U.S. entity, while relinquishing operational control and governance rights.  Three managing investors—Oracle Corporation, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi state investment firm MGX—will collectively hold 45% of the new company. Another 5% will be owned by additional new investors whose identities have not been fully disclosed. Affiliates of existing ByteDance investors will hold 30.1%.

The structure is designed to address U.S. national security concerns by ensuring that TikTok’s U.S. operations, including data handling and content moderation policies, are effectively ring-fenced from its China-based parent.

The transaction is expected to be finalized by January, a timeline that reflects pressure from U.S. lawmakers and regulators who have threatened to enforce legislation that could force TikTok off U.S. app stores if it fails to sever ties with ByteDance. TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States, making it one of the most politically charged technology platforms in the country.

China’s cautious language reflects the legal and political constraints surrounding the deal. Beijing has repeatedly stressed that any transfer of TikTok-related technology, particularly its recommendation algorithms, must comply with China’s export control rules, which were updated in 2020 to cover advanced data-processing technologies. Those rules effectively give Chinese authorities veto power over the export of TikTok’s core algorithm, a key reason negotiations stalled in previous years.

While the latest arrangement is structured as a transfer of operational control rather than a full sale of technology, it still requires careful navigation of Chinese regulatory requirements. That sensitivity helps explain why Beijing has avoided explicit endorsement of the deal, even as talks advanced and binding agreements were signed.

The commerce ministry’s comments also reflect broader frustration in Beijing over what it sees as discriminatory treatment of Chinese firms operating in the United States. TikTok has become the most prominent example of a wider pattern of scrutiny facing Chinese technology companies amid deepening strategic rivalry between the two countries.

If finalized as planned, the Oracle-led deal would mark one of the most significant forced restructurings of a major global tech platform. Whether it fully satisfies regulators on both sides, however, will only become clear once the final structure is approved and implemented early next year.