Somewhere in Brazil, a 20-year-old is sitting in a university lecture hall. Her name is Amelie Voigt Trejes. She hasn’t given an interview. She isn’t on any company’s board. She doesn’t have a startup, a venture fund, or a viral moment behind her. And yet in March 2026, Forbes placed her at the top of a very specific list as the youngest billionaire in the world, worth $1.1 billion, by exactly seven weeks. This is the story of how she got there without ever really going anywhere, and what it means when the youngest billionaire on earth is a private student who never chose the title.
The Short Version
A city of 200,000 people. A university lecture hall. A 20-year-old girl.
That’s where the world’s youngest billionaire lives.
Her name is Amelie Voigt Trejes. She’s Brazilian. She’s worth $1.1 billion. And she has never given an interview about it.
This is her story or as much of it as anyone outside her family can honestly tell.
Key Takeaways
- Amelie Voigt Trejes is the world’s youngest billionaire in 2026, at age 20 with a net worth of $1.1 billion.
- Her wealth comes from WEG, a Brazilian industrial giant that makes electric motors and generators, cofounded by her grandfather in 1961.
- She inherited her shares from her mother, Cladis Voigt the daughter of the WEG cofounder.
- She has twin brothers, Pedro and Felipe, each also worth $1.1 billion.
- Seven Voigt cousins are billionaires, together worth $9.5 billion.
- She beat Johannes von Baumbach, a German pharma heir, by seven weeks in age to claim the title.
- She is a university student, not an executive or board member.
Where the Story Actually Starts
A Small City in Southern Brazil
The story doesn’t start in São Paulo. It doesn’t start in Rio.
It starts in Jaraguá do Sul.
Jaraguá do Sul is a small city in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. About 200,000 people live there. It sits in a region originally settled by German immigrants in the 1800s, and the German influence is still visible today in the architecture, the last names, the family businesses that built the local economy.
One of those family businesses is WEG.
Three Men, One Idea, One Year
In 1961, three men from Jaraguá do Sul started an electric motor company. Their names were Werner Ricardo Voigt (Amelie’s grandfather), Eggon João da Silva, and Geraldo Werninghaus. WEG is an acronym of their first names.
They had no idea what they were about to build.
From an Electric Motor Shop to a $7 Billion Company
WEG started small. It made electric motors. That was it.
But Brazil in the 1960s was industrializing. Factories needed motors. Farms needed motors. Power plants needed motors. WEG grew alongside its country. In 1971, it went public on Brazil’s stock exchange under the ticker WEGE3. Then came decades of expansion first across Brazil, then across Latin America, then across the world.
Today, sixty-four years after that first electric motor came off the workshop bench, WEG operates in more than ten countries. It employs tens of thousands of people. Its annual revenue is roughly $7 billion. It makes not just electric motors but generators, transformers, and industrial automation systems.
And here’s the part that matters for Amelie’s story: the three founding families still control the company together. Through a holding vehicle called WPA Participações, they collectively hold 50.1% of WEG’s public shares. Every generation of every founder’s family has inherited a piece of that control.
That’s what Amelie inherited. A small piece of that controls a piece worth $1.1 billion in 2026.
The Mother No One Writes About
Most articles about Amelie Voigt Trejes skip over her mother. They shouldn’t.
Amelie’s mother is Cladis Voigt. She is one of Werner Ricardo Voigt’s three children. When Werner died in 2016, his stake in WEG was divided among his three children through the family’s holding structure. Cladis received her share. Her siblings received theirs. Each of them, in turn, passed pieces of their inheritance to their own children.
That’s how Amelie’s fortune arrived. She didn’t inherit directly from her famous grandfather she inherited from her mother, who inherited from her grandfather.
The pattern matters because it explains how one industrial fortune can produce so many young billionaires. Every time a stake passes down a generation, it splits into pieces. Every piece, in a growing company, can eventually become worth a billion dollars on its own.
Twin Brothers and Six Cousins
Amelie is not alone in her family’s story. Not by a long stretch.
She has twin brothers Pedro and Felipe Voigt Trejes. Both of them are billionaires. Both of them are worth $1.1 billion each. Both of them inherited from their mother, Cladis, the same way Amelie did.
Then there are the cousins:
- Eduardo Voigt Schwartz — $1.7 billion
- Mariana Voigt Schwartz — $1.7 billion
- Lívia Voigt de Assis — $1.4 billion (was the world’s youngest billionaire in 2025)
- Dora Voigt de Assis — $1.4 billion
Seven cousins, all descendants of Werner Ricardo Voigt. All billionaires. All from the same small city. Together they hold $9.5 billion.
None of them runs WEG. Most are in their twenties. Several are still in university.
The Seven-Week Margin
Here’s the strange part about being the youngest billionaire in the world. It comes down to weeks.
In early 2026, Forbes was preparing its annual World’s Billionaires list. Two people were tied for the youngest spot. Both were 20 years old. Both had just crossed the billion-dollar threshold.
One was Amelie Voigt Trejes. The other was Johannes von Baumbach, a German heir to the Boehringer Ingelheim pharmaceutical fortune, worth $6.6 billion.
Johannes was six times richer than Amelie.
But Amelie was born seven weeks after him.
So Amelie got the title.
That’s the whole story. Seven weeks. One line item on a spreadsheet in a Forbes editor’s office. And a global title that will travel with her for the rest of the year.
Next year, someone else might take it. That’s how these titles work: Amelie’s cousin Lívia held it in 2025 before Johannes took it, and Amelie only took it back for the Voigts by that seven-week margin in 2026.
A University Student With $1.1 Billion
Try to imagine it. You wake up in a dorm room, or an apartment, or your parents’ house. You go to class. You take notes. You sit through lectures.
And you have a billion dollars.
You don’t run a company. You don’t attend board meetings. You don’t decide who gets hired or fired at the factory your grandfather built. You’re just a student with a stake in something your family has built and controlled for 65 years.
That’s Amelie’s life, or at least the version of her life the world knows about. Forbes has never interviewed her. She hasn’t posted publicly about her wealth. She hasn’t started a foundation. She hasn’t spoken at a conference. She isn’t a public figure by choice; she became one only because a stock price crossed a threshold.
Her siblings, Pedro and Felipe, are the same. So are her cousins. They are billionaires who inherited quietly, live quietly, and so far plan quietly.
What Kind of Story This Actually Is
There’s a temptation to turn every young-billionaire story into an inspiration piece. To find “the lesson.” To pretend the reader could do this too if they just worked hard enough.
Amelie’s story doesn’t work like that.
She didn’t build anything. She didn’t take a risk. She didn’t drop out of school to chase a vision. Everything she has, she got because a man she barely knew from her grandfather died when she was around 10 or 11 started a company 64 years ago in a small Brazilian city.
That’s not a criticism of her. She didn’t do anything wrong. She was born into a specific family, in a specific city, at a specific moment when Brazilian industrial wealth was compounding across generations.
But it means her story is not a template. Her story is a snapshot of how inherited wealth actually works in 2026, of how family trusts quietly move billions between generations, of how a small city in southern Brazil can produce seven billionaires from a single family.
What Happens Next
Amelie is 20 years old. If she lives an average lifespan, she has about 60 more years ahead of her.
She could stay a passive shareholder for those 60 years. She could join WEG’s board someday, like her older relatives eventually did. She could sell her stake and start something of her own. She could give her wealth away. She could do all of these things.
Nobody outside her family knows what she’ll choose. She might not know yet either.
But here’s the thing about being a 20-year-old billionaire: the interesting story is never the one that got you there.
It’s the one that comes after.
FAQs
Who is Amelie Voigt Trejes?
A 20-year-old Brazilian university student who became the world’s youngest billionaire in 2026, with a net worth of $1.1 billion from an inherited stake in WEG.
How did she become a billionaire?
Through inheritance. Her mother, Cladis Voigt daughter of WEG cofounder Werner Ricardo Voigt passed shares of the family company to Amelie and her twin brothers.
What is WEG?
A Brazilian industrial company founded in 1961 that makes electric motors, generators, and automation systems, with $7 billion in annual revenue and operations in more than ten countries.
Does she run any part of WEG?
No. She is a passive shareholder with no board seat and no executive role. She is currently attending university.
How many Voigt family members are billionaires?
Seven cousins, all grandchildren of WEG cofounder Werner Ricardo Voigt, appear on the 2026 Forbes list, together worth $9.5 billion.
