UiPath founder overtakes Ion Tiriac as wealthiest Romanian in Forbes 2024 ranking

UiPath founder Daniel Dines is the richest Romanian in 2024, after ranking third in the local top last year. Romania has six representatives in the latest world billionaires ranking recently published by Forbes magazine, the same six as in 2023. They have, as a group, a wealth totalling around USD 10.6 billion.

Dines previously held the top position among the richest Romanians in the Forbes list in 2022 and 2021.

Three of the richest Romanians included in the 2024 Forbes list made their fortunes in the technology sector and are now residing in the United States: Daniel Dines, Ion Stoica, and Matei Zaharia. Also on the list are former tennis player turned businessman Ion Ţiriac and the cofounders of Dedeman, brothers Dragoş and Adrian Pavăl.

The richest Romanian in 2024 is Daniel Dines, 52, cofounder and CEO of the technology company UiPath, with a fortune estimated by Forbes at USD 2.7 billion. That puts him at the 1,238th spot in the Forbes top that includes 2,781 individuals with fortunes of at least one billion dollars. In 2023, his fortune was estimated at USD 1.6 billion, down from USD 2.9 billion in 2022, and USD 6 billion in 2021.

UiPath is a robotic process automation company that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2021. Dines founded DeskOver in 2005 in Bucharest, Romania. He later renamed the company UiPath and relocated its headquarters to New York in 2018. The company has not yet registered a profit.

The second Romanian on the Forbes list is Ion Ţiriac, 84, ranked 1,545th with a fortune of USD 2.1 billion. The former tennis player leads the Tiriac Group, which has businesses in real estate, automotive, financial services, and beyond. In 2023, his fortune was estimated at USD 2 billion.

Next in the ranking, occupying the 1,623rd spot in the Forbes list, is Dragoș Pavăl, with a fortune of USD 2 billion. In 2023, his fortune was USD 1.7 billion.

Dragoș Pavăl and his brother, Adrian, own Dedeman, one of Romania's leading retailers of building materials and home improvement products. Moreover, Adrian Pavăl, 55, is the next Romanian in the Forbes Top, with an estimated fortune of USD 1.4 billion, and is ranked 2,152nd in the billionaires list.

The next Romanians in the ranking are Ion Stoica, 59, and Matei Zaharia, 38, who jointly occupy the 2,410th spot in the ranking, each having a fortune estimated at USD 1.2 billion.

Ion Stoica is the co-founder and executive chairman of the software startup Databricks, valued at USD 38 billion in August 2021. He was the initial CEO from its founding in 2013 until early 2016, when he handed over the position to cofounder Ali Ghodsi. Before Databricks, Stoica co-founded the video streaming startup Conviva. He is also a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and lives in Berkeley, California. His business partner, Matei Zaharia, is cofounder and chief technology at Databricks. Forbes notes that he is the brains behind the popular Apache Spark analytics engine.