Today the Financial Times launches Ambitious Wealth, refocusing the award-winning FT Wealth magazine to look at how the private fortunes of the Second Gilded Age are being used. Edited by Hugo Greenhalgh and published six times a year, FT Wealth will examine how the wealthy of the 21st century seek to change the world through business, finance and philanthropy.
“Wealth is becoming younger and more mobile – and more ambitious,” says Greenhalgh. “Elon Musk is seeking to conquer space while Yuri Milner is trying to find a cure for death. The next generation of wealthy are tackling those issues usually the preserve of governments – and they have budgets to match.”

FT.com is also beginning a series of video interviews with signatories of the Giving Pledge, the initiative launched by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates which encourages billionaires to donate more than half their fortunes to charity.

“This is an Age of Ambition,” says Stephen Foley, the FT’s US investment correspondent. “Those with great wealth are committing themselves to projects in a way that is new, powerful and profoundly important for our world. Ambitious Wealth focuses on what they hope to build, for good and sometimes for ill.”

The relaunch issue of FT Wealth will examine ways in which prizes spur scientific innovation, look at how a start-up is pairing donors with charities, and ask philanthropist and investor Nicolas Berggruen – formerly known as the “homeless billionaire” for his lack of a permanent base – about the power of ideas.

“One potential advantage of private wealth is that it can take on things that are not immediately measurable,” Berggruen tells Foley. “If you are a charitable or government organisation or a business, you have to deliver reasonably tangible results for your constituency and on a relatively short-term horizon. We can take the risk of investment in something that is valuable — and the world of ideas is a world that’s risky.”