‘Sudden wealth syndrome 2.0’: Therapists say AI’s new multimillionaires feel guilty, isolated and cut off from everyone else

“The rich aren’t particularly happy either,” Menlo Ventures partner and prolific poster Deedy Das wrote on X in May. By his own “back of the envelope” estimate, roughly 10,000 people—employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia and Meta, plus founders—have built fortunes well above $20 million in the past five years. Many of those who have “made it,” he added, feel “a profound lack of purpose.” (Menlo Ventures is an investor in Anthropic.)

Bay Area therapists coined a term for that feeling during the dot-com boom of the 1990s—“sudden wealth syndrome”—and they say the syndrome is back in the wake of the AI windfall.

Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart founded the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute in the 1990s to treat people struggling with a sudden influx of wealth from the first internet gold rush. They recently spoke to The Cut about the syndrome’s AI-fueled resurgence.

‘Sudden wealth syndrome 2.0’

“It’s sudden wealth syndrome 2.0,” 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.”

Fortunately for the afflicted, there’s an industry for that. 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 to join. Paracelsus........

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