Filipino-American in Snapchat in billionaires’ club

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino-American Bobby Murphy, co-founder of popular messaging app Snapchat, made it to this year’s Forbes 400 wealthiest billionaires in the US.

At the age of 27, Murphy became the world’s second-youngest billionaire, while his Snapchat co-founder and fraternity brother Evan Spiegel, 25, is the youngest, according to Forbes.

Both ranked 375th in the list and each had a net worth of $1.8 billion.

Murphy, whose mother hails from the Philippines, grew up in Berkeley, California and took mathematical and computational science at Stanford University where he met Spiegel.

Both Murphy and Speigel developed an app called Picaboo in 2011. The two rebranded the app as Snapchat, which was initially released in 2011. It now has a value of $16 billion.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is still the richest American with a net worth of $76 billion, according to Forbes.

Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett with $62 billion and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison with $47.5 billion are the second and third richest, Forbes said.

Forbes said the 2015 edition of the list was harder than ever to join.

“The price of entry this year was $1.7 billion, the highest it’s been in the 34 years that Forbes has tracked American wealth. Last year it took $1.55 billion to make the cut. Because the bar is so high, 145 US billionaires missed the list,” Forbes said.