Chef's editorials

Czech Jan Hammer from London-based Index Ventures made it to Midas List 2025 based on his bet on Robinhood

May 30, 2025

The Midas List returns for its 24th year with another definitive ranking of the 100 best tech investors in the world.

The Forbes Midas list is the annual ranking by Forbes magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the “Oscars for venture capitalists in tech,” the Midas List uses parameters that include the first-day market capitalization of IPOs and the opinions of a panel of experts.

The name alludes to the mythological King Midas, renowned for his ability to turn anything he touched into gold.

The long freeze for initial public offerings and mergers appears to be thawing and in one corner of the startup market, deals are running white-hot. In 2025, a small cohort of mega startups like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Stripe now command super-sized valuations, rarely seen for private companies. And their earliest backers are now surging ahead in the Midas List, Forbes’ ranking of the world’s top venture capitalists.

Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the 24th annual Midas List is again topped by Alfred Lin. While the Sequoia investor continues to reap the benefits of early bets on Airbnb and Doordash, which both went public in 2020, a 2021 investment in OpenAI at a $14 billion valuation now adds to his staying power. The ChatGPT-maker is currently valued at $300 billion after raising a $40 billion round in April, a new record for the most money raised by a private startup.

It’s not just OpenAI. The surging valuations of startups like SpaceX, Databricks and Anthropic accounts for eight of the 15 newcomers joining this year’s Midas List. Investors Shaun Maguire of Sequoia and Craft Ventures’ David Sacks have broken into the list for the first time largely thanks to bets on Elon Musk’s projects, notably SpaceX, now the world’s most valuable private company after raising earlier this year at $350 billion.

Czech-born Jan Hammer is a partner at Index Ventures and ranks at number 50 on the Midas List this year. Hammer led Index’s investment in Dutch payment company Adyen (IPO 2018). The Stripe rival now has a stock market of $56 billion. He was a seed investor in Robinhood (IPO 2021) after over 70 investors had rejected it. (The company’s market cap has surged to over $57 billion along with other crypto-linked stocks.)

Other key investments include international money transfer provider Wise (went public via direct listing in 2021) and French health insurance startup Alan ($2 billion valuation). For years, he has worked with the Tate, the modern art gallery in London, to help expand its Central and Eastern Europe collection.

The Midas List is compiled annually using a data-driven approach that combines public information with submissions from investors at hundreds of VC firms. To be eligible, investors must have backed companies that either went public or were acquired for at least $200 million in the past five years, or that have at least doubled in private valuation to $400 million or more during that time. Deal credit can be shared between up to two investors. Forbes and TrueBridge place greater emphasis on liquid exits than on unrealized gains, and both early-stage investors who generate significant multiples on invested capital and later-stage investors who return substantial cash can earn a spot. The top-ranked Midas investors typically excel in both areas, with a track record spanning a dozen or more qualifying deals.