Sudden wealth syndrome is returning among technology workers and founders who have made fortunes from the artificial intelligence boom, therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area have said.
Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart, who founded the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, said a new generation of wealthy people was struggling with isolation, anxiety and a loss of purpose.
“It’s sudden wealth syndrome 2.0,” Ms DiFuria said. “All these people coming out of the AI boom are experiencing wealth on a different level, and having more complex emotions about it, too.”
Their comments come after Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures, estimated that about 10,000 people connected to companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia and Meta had built fortunes of more than $20 million over the past five years.
Mr Das, who described his calculation as a “back of the envelope” estimate, said many of those who had “made it” felt “a profound lack of purpose”. Menlo Ventures is an investor in Anthropic.
Wealth, isolation and the AI boom
The therapists said the latest wave differed from the dot-com era because some of those making money from AI believed the technology could harm society, including by replacing jobs.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Ms DiFuria said the moral unease could make it harder for newly wealthy people to discuss their lives with friends.
“If you’re already feeling anxious about your wealth and the whole world is saying, ‘What you’re doing is going to kill me or take my job,’ how do you speak to your friends?” she said. “It’s really next level from what we’ve seen before.”
The scale of the windfall has been substantial. CB Insights counted 498 private AI companies valued at $1 billion or more in August 2025, with a combined value of $2.7 trillion.
More than 600 current and former OpenAI employees sold shares worth a combined $6.6 billion in a tender offer in October 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal. About 75 of them reportedly sold the maximum permitted amount and received $30 million each.
Forbes listed at least 86 AI billionaires in March 2026, with a combined wealth of $2.9 trillion. Forty-five were newcomers to the list.
Despite having more wealthy peers, many of those who have profited from AI remain socially cut off, Mr Goldbart said.
“It creates social isolation. People who have derived wealth from AI, they very much have their own subculture,” he said.
The therapists said some billionaires now live in enclaves, including compounds where family members have separate houses and swimming pools. Mark Zuckerberg’s compound in Kauai has been estimated to cost about $270 million, including the land, and includes a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter he has described as “just like a little shelter”.
Jeff Bezos has spent about $237 million on three properties on Indian Creek, a man-made island in Miami-Dade County known as “Billionaire Bunker”. The island has its own police department and a gated bridge.
Mr Goldbart described the growing separation between the wealthy and everyone else as a “major social problem”. He said society was “drifting toward a great imbalance between the haves and have-nots, with the rich people up on the hill, cut off from everybody else below them.”
Ms DiFuria said the effects could be passed down through families, with some wealthy children rarely leaving home and having little contact with people from poorer backgrounds.
Therapy for sudden wealth syndrome
Specialist services have emerged for people trying to manage the consequences of sudden riches. TIGER 21, a peer group whose members meet for a full day each month, requires at least $20 million in investable assets or qualifying net worth.
Paracelsus Recovery, a residential clinic in Zurich, offers clients a private chef, a driver and a live-in therapist. Its fees are about £100,000 a week.
A healthcare consultancy that arranges doctors and mental health care for wealthy families charges retainers starting at $30,000 for 50 hours.
Ms DiFuria and Mr Goldbart said their own approach began with an initial meeting that often lasted about six hours. Clients were asked to develop a set of “operational values” and agree practical goals, such as volunteering or giving away some of their money.
However, they acknowledged that the people most isolated from society were also the least likely to seek help.
“Our clients are self-selecting,” Mr Goldbart said.
“Most people with narcissism are not going to come to ask us questions about values or purpose,” Ms DiFuria added.
Some families, she said, chose greater separation instead. She described one billionaire family that moved from feeling guilty about its spending to owning yachts and planes, buying several homes and relocating to an area populated by other billionaires.
“We found our people,” the family told her. “We don’t have to be embarrassed or hide the fact that we have a plane and a yacht and five homes. We can finally be open about it.”
