4 Regular People Who Became AI Millionaires (And Why I’m Still Skeptical)

I spend about an hour on Reddit every day. Not doomscrolling. I’m hunting for AI tactics, comparing tools, trying to figure out if there’s some cheaper alternative to whatever I’m currently paying for.

For some reason, I keep seeing the same claim pop up everywhere. AI is turning regular people into millionaires.

My gut reaction? Yeah, I don’t buy it.

Look, I’ve been a backend engineer since 2010. Sixteen years of Java, Python, C#, Kotlin, SQL. I even learned COBOL in college, which probably tells you something about my tolerance for pain. I use AI constantly. Claude Code helps me ship iPhone apps. Four released so far, three more in the works. AI cleans up my blog drafts too. You’re reading one right now.

Am I a millionaire?

Not even close.

So when I see headlines about teenagers retiring early thanks to ChatGPT, I want receipts. I went looking for four verified examples of regular people who actually became millionaires through AI. Real names. Real numbers. Real backgrounds you can actually check.

What I found surprised me. But probably not how you’d expect.

The 4 Verified AI Millionaires

I set strict rules for this. Nobody who was already wealthy. No tech executives cashing out of big companies. No venture capital darlings who raised millions before earning a single dollar in revenue. Just regular people who picked up AI tools and built something that made them rich.

Here’s what I turned up.

1. Zach Yadegari and Cal AI. Solving Your Own Problem to Make Money With AI

Zach was eighteen when this took off. High school kid from Long Island, New York. He’d been coding since age seven because he was obsessed with Minecraft and Roblox. No wealthy family backing him. No Silicon Valley connections.

The problem he ran into was pretty simple. He was a skinny teenager trying to put on muscle, and existing calorie tracking apps drove him nuts. You had to weigh everything. Manually punch in each food item. He hated the whole process.

After ChatGPT dropped, he built Cal AI. You snap a photo of your plate, and AI figures out the calories and macros. About 90% accuracy. Dead simple idea that solved his own annoying problem.

The numbers are wild. Launched May 2024. By July 2025, over 8.3 million downloads. As of September 2025, the app pulls roughly $1.4 million in gross profit per month after Apple and Google take their cut.

How’d he fund it? Profits from a previous small project called Totally Science. It helped kids get around internet blocks at school. No investors. No trust fund money.

2. Joe Popelas. The Shelf Stocker Who Built an eBook Empire

College student working minimum wage. Eleven bucks an hour stocking shelves at a retail store. Needed extra income but couldn’t sacrifice his class schedule.

He noticed something interesting. Publishing companies made millions from eBooks, but creating them was slow and expensive. ChatGPT changed that math completely.

So he started churning out AI generated eBooks on stuff like personal development and wellness. Used ChatGPT to write 25,000 to 50,000 word books in hours. Hired cheap freelance proofreaders. Sold them through Pinterest ads targeting middle aged women interested in self improvement.

First profitable day was October 3rd. Twenty bucks. By December 28th, three months later, he hit his first $1,000 profit day. By the end of year one, over $1 million in revenue. Someone even offered $930,000 to buy the whole operation.

Profit margins? Around 70 to 80 percent after advertising costs.

3. Maor Shlomo and Base44. The Solo Founder With ADHD Who Made Millions With AI

Software engineer who bootstrapped with somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 of his own savings. No cofounders. Managing severe ADHD the whole time he was building the company.

The problem he spotted? Even with all the AI coding tools floating around, regular people still couldn’t create complete software applications. They could get code snippets sure. But not working products with databases and login systems and actual deployment.

Base44 lets you describe an app in plain English, and it builds the entire thing. Not just code. Databases. Authentication. Backend logic. Deployment. The whole package.

He launched with just three friends as beta testers. Hit 10,000 users in month one. Reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue just three weeks after public launch. By month six, $3.5 million ARR and $189,000 profit in a single month.

Then Wix acquired Base44 for $80 million in initial cash, with additional earnout payments running through 2029.

His marketing budget? Zero. He grew the whole thing by posting transparently on LinkedIn and Twitter about what he was building.

4. Pieter Levels. The Self Taught Developer Making $3 Million Per Year

Self taught developer from Amsterdam. No computer science degree. No university education in programming. No Silicon Valley connections whatsoever.

He tackled multiple problems actually. Remote workers needed data on which cities were good for digital nomads. Job seekers needed remote positions. People wanted professional headshots without hiring expensive photographers.

He built a whole portfolio of products. Nomad List started as a simple spreadsheet he shared on Twitter. Remote OK became a job board. Photo AI lets you upload selfies and generate professional headshots using AI trained on your face.

Photo AI alone generates about $138,000 per month. Remote OK brings in over $2 million annually. Total income sits around $3 million per year.

Team size? Zero employees. He runs everything solo using automation and what he calls “primitive” technology. Vanilla PHP. jQuery. SQLite. Other developers make fun of his stack constantly. His bank account doesn’t seem to mind.

Why I’m Still Skeptical About Making Money With AI

These stories are real. The numbers check out. Regular people did become millionaires using AI.

But here’s what nobody seems to be asking.

If 10 million people are trying to make money with AI right now, and 100 of them become millionaires, what does that actually prove?

It proves it’s possible. Doesn’t prove it’s probable.

Every single person on this list shares something that has nothing to do with artificial intelligence.

They would probably be successful at something anyway.

Joe Popelas didn’t just use ChatGPT. He identified a market. Middle aged women on Pinterest. He figured out the economics. 70 to 80 percent margins. And he executed daily while going to college full time. That’s not a ChatGPT skill. That’s pure hustle.

Maor Shlomo built Base44 while managing severe ADHD. No cofounders. Using ten to twenty grand of his own money. He hit $1 million ARR in three weeks. That kind of velocity comes from somewhere deeper than knowing how to write good prompts.

Pieter Levels runs a $3 million per year business completely alone. No employees. He’s been grinding since 2014. Launched twelve startups in twelve months just to find what worked. Most of them flopped. He kept going anyway.

Zach Yadegari started coding at age seven. He was already building projects in high school. He funded Cal AI with profits from a previous project he built as a teenager.

These aren’t regular people who stumbled into AI and got lucky. These are driven people who happened to find AI at the right moment.

The Force Multiplier Theory

Here’s how I actually see this whole thing.

AI isn’t a lottery ticket. It’s a force multiplier.

If you’re already the kind of person who puts in the work, tolerates delayed gratification, and keeps going when things get hard, AI makes you faster. It compresses timelines. Lets you do in months what used to take years.

But if you’re waiting for AI to do the work for you? The multiplier works on zero too. Zero times anything is still zero.

I’ve been a backend engineer for 16 years. Learning new languages doesn’t scare me anymore. Once you’ve picked up three or four, the fifth is just syntax. AI didn’t make me a millionaire. But it did help me finally ship those iPhone apps I’d been meaning to build for years. Let me apply my existing knowledge to Swift faster than I could have alone.

That’s the real story here. AI accelerates what you already have.

What About the Rest of Us Who Want to Make Money With AI?

Here’s what frustrates me about the whole “AI millionaire” thing.

We’re so focused on the seven figure exits that we completely ignore the five figure wins. The ones that actually change people’s lives.

If you build something with AI that makes $1,000 a month passively? That’s huge.

That’s $12,000 a year you can throw into index funds. That’s paying down your mortgage faster. That’s taking your family to the Maldives instead of just scrolling through Instagram photos of it. That’s breathing room.

Not everyone needs to become a millionaire. Some of us just want options.

The people making $1,000 or $2,000 a month with AI side projects don’t get podcast interviews. Nobody writes CNBC articles about them. But they might be the more realistic model for what AI can actually do for regular people.

What Actually Works When You Want to Make Money With AI

Looking at the research, here’s what these AI millionaires actually have in common.

They solved their own problems first. Zach hated calorie tracking. Joe needed money while in college. Pieter needed information about cities for remote work. They didn’t try to guess what the market wanted. They built what they personally needed.

They moved fast. Joe launched his first eBook within six days of having the idea. Maor iterated Base44 with daily feedback sessions. Pieter explicitly rejects perfection in favor of speed. None of them spent months planning.

They had skills that transferred. Not necessarily coding skills. Business instincts. Marketing understanding. Pure execution ability. AI amplified those existing capabilities.

They were comfortable with failure. Pieter launched twelve startups in twelve months. Most flopped. These aren’t people who quit when things go sideways.

They built in public. Maor grew Base44 entirely through transparent LinkedIn posts. Pieter shares his revenue numbers publicly. Joe documented his journey on YouTube. Authenticity created distribution.

The Honest Verdict on AI Millionaires

Can regular people make money with AI and become millionaires?

Yes. It happens. The examples are verified.

Should you expect it to happen to you?

Probably not. These are outliers. Exceptional people who found an exceptional moment.

But here’s what you should take from their stories.

If you’re the kind of person who already has drive, who already tolerates delayed gratification, who already executes when others just talk about ideas, AI can be the vehicle that gets you there faster.

And if you’re not chasing millions? If you just want to build something that makes your life a little easier?

AI can definitely help with that. I know because it helped me.

I’m not a millionaire. But I shipped four apps. I run this blog. I spend an hour a day learning instead of doomscrolling.

That’s not nothing. That might even be the more honest success story.

FAQ About Making Money With AI

Can you really become a millionaire using AI?

Yes, verified examples exist of regular people hitting millionaire status through AI powered businesses since 2022. But these cases share traits beyond AI skills. Strong work ethic. Business instincts. Tolerance for risk. The AI tools amplified existing capabilities rather than creating success from scratch.

What AI tools did these millionaires use to make money?

The most common tools include ChatGPT for content generation and coding assistance, Stable Diffusion and similar models for image generation, and AI enhanced development environments like Claude Code. Most successful founders used relatively simple, accessible tools. Nothing fancy.

How long does it take to make money with AI?

Timelines vary wildly. Joe Popelas went from zero to $1 million in revenue within one year. Maor Shlomo hit $1 million ARR in just three weeks after launch. Most people experimenting with AI businesses don’t achieve these results though. Smaller wins of $1,000 to $5,000 per month are more common and still meaningful.

What is the most realistic way to make money with AI?

Based on verified success stories, the most realistic approach involves solving a problem you personally experience, moving quickly to test the idea, and using AI to accelerate rather than replace your existing skills. Building passive income of $1,000 to $2,000 monthly is more achievable than millionaire status. And it can meaningfully improve your quality of life.

Related Reading

If you’re just getting started with AI, check out our Start Here page for the basics. For more on the tools mentioned in this post, see our guides on getting started with ChatGPT and Claude Code for non-coders.