Richest Black People Statistics in US 2026 | Key Facts

Richest Black People in the US 2026

When we talk about the richest Black person in the US in 2026, the name at the very top is David Steward — a 74-year-old IT entrepreneur from Clinton, Missouri, who grew up in the segregated South with seven siblings and a father who worked three jobs to keep the family going. Steward co-founded World Wide Technology (WWT) in 1990 with just $250,000 in seed capital, and today that single investment decision has translated into an estimated net worth of approximately $12.4 billion as of 2026. WWT is now the largest Black-owned business in America, generating over $20 billion in annual revenue, serving more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, and employing close to 10,000 people globally. Forbes gave Steward a perfect self-made score of 10 out of 10 — a distinction shared by just 25 billionaires on the entire Forbes 400 list — making him one of the most genuinely exceptional rags-to-riches wealth stories in American corporate history. He is one of only four Black Americans on the Forbes 400 in its most recent edition, and his position at the top of Black American wealth is not a recent development: it represents decades of disciplined enterprise building in one of the most competitive industries in the world.

The broader picture of the richest Black people in the US in 2026 goes beyond Steward and encompasses a small but remarkable group of self-made entrepreneurs, financiers, athletes, and media personalities who have each carved out billionaire status from industries as diverse as private equity, tech, entertainment, sports, and media. As of the Stacker analysis based on Forbes data published February 2, 2026, there are approximately 11 Black American billionaires, with a combined net worth of $52.1 billion. That figure is extraordinary in human terms — but it is also a stark reminder of structural inequality: $52.1 billion is roughly one-fifteenth of the net worth of the US’s richest individual alone. The story of Black wealth in America in 2026 is simultaneously a story of inspirational individual achievement and of a racial wealth gap that, according to the US Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, has actually widened in absolute dollar terms in recent years — even as Black-owned businesses have grown at a faster rate than almost any other demographic group in the country.

Interesting Facts About the Richest Black People in the US 2026

Source: Stacker — Meet America’s Black Billionaires, Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List data as of Feb 2, 2026 (stacker.com); Forbes 400 2024 (forbes.com); Forbes World’s Billionaires 2025 (forbes.com); U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) 2021, released April 2024 (census.gov); U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey (ABS) 2023, reference year 2022 — released Dec 19, 2024 (census.gov)

The interesting facts surrounding the richest Black people in the US in 2026 underscore a story of extraordinary individual achievement set against an equally extraordinary backdrop of systemic financial inequality. David Steward’s journey from a segregated small town in Missouri to a $12.4 billion net worth — without inherited capital, family connections, or the Ivy League networks that typically accelerate billionaire trajectories — is among the most compelling entrepreneurial origin stories in American business. His perfect 10 out of 10 self-made score from Forbes places him in the rarest category of wealth builders on the entire Forbes 400, and the fact that WWT has reached $20 billion in annual revenue while remaining private and Black-owned is a foundational achievement in American economic history. The company quietly powers the digital infrastructure of firms like Boeing, AT&T, the US federal government, Apple, and Microsoft — businesses that most Americans interact with daily.

The macro-level statistics tell a different story. Only 23 Black billionaires exist globally out of 3,028 — less than 1% — and only 11 of those are American. Their combined net worth of $52.1 billion pales against the individual fortunes of the top five white American billionaires, who hold over $1.6 trillion collectively. The Census Bureau’s documented finding that Black households held only 4.7% of total US wealth despite comprising 13.6% of the population is perhaps the single most important statistical framing for understanding Black wealth in America in 2026. These are not abstract social science statistics: they represent real gaps in homeownership rates, retirement savings, business credit access, and intergenerational wealth transfer that compound across generations. The rise of Black billionaires in tech, finance, and entertainment is real and meaningful — but it has not yet meaningfully moved the population-level wealth needle.

Top 11 Richest Black Americans in the US 2026 by Net Worth

Source: Stacker — Meet America’s Black Billionaires, Forbes Real-Time Billionaires data as of Feb 2, 2026 (stacker.com); Forbes World’s Billionaires 2025 (forbes.com); Wikipedia Black Billionaires list (en.wikipedia.org, Jan 2026); UrbanGeekz — Meet America’s 2025 Black Billionaires (urbangeekz.com, Feb 2025); Celebrity Net Worth (celebritynetworth.com)

The top 11 richest Black Americans in the US in 2026 span a remarkable range of industries and paths to wealth, but several patterns stand out clearly. First, sports and entertainment account for at least five of the eleven names — Jordan, Winfrey, Jay-Z, LeBron, Tiger Woods — reflecting a well-documented reality in which media visibility and talent-driven earnings have historically been more accessible pathways to Black wealth than corporate ownership or finance. Second, the tech and finance tier — Steward, Smith, Karp, and Awotona — represents a newer and arguably more structurally durable form of wealth accumulation, built on equity ownership in businesses that compound in value over time. Steward at $12.4 billion and Smith at approximately $10–12 billion are both in a league entirely separate from the athletes and entertainers beneath them on this list, whose fortunes — while extraordinary — are more reliant on active income, brand value, and deal-by-deal leverage than on the deep equity ownership that drives billionaire-scale compounding.

Alexander Karp’s position at roughly number three is one of the most striking entries on this list. As co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, Karp’s mother is African American — and his inclusion among Black billionaires reflects the broader complexity of racial identity in American wealth tracking. His net worth surged dramatically as Palantir’s stock appreciated following its 2020 direct public offering, and as of the most recent Forbes data, he sits among the wealthiest individuals in the US, period. LeBron James occupies a uniquely historic position: his $1 billion+ net worth, achieved while still an active NBA player, was the first time any active professional athlete in any sport crossed that threshold. It was built not primarily through salary — though his career earnings exceed $900 million pretax — but through equity stakes in Blaze Pizza, SpringHill Entertainment, Fenway Sports Group, and endorsement deals with Nike, Pepsi, and Walmart.

David Steward Wealth Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Forbes 400 Annual List 2024 (forbes.com); Forbes World’s Billionaires 2025 (forbes.com); Black Girl Nerds — David Steward Richest Black Person profile, Oct 2025); BusinessDay — Richest Black Person in America (businessday.ng, Feb 2025); OONNIE — David Steward Net Worth 2026 (oonnie.com); Goodreturns David Steward profile

David Steward’s wealth trajectory as the richest Black person in the US in 2026 is one of the cleanest illustrations of how private company ownership creates billionaire-scale wealth. The 50% jump in his estimated net worth from $7.6 billion in 2023 to $11.4 billion in 2024 — a gain of $3.8 billion in a single year — happened entirely because the implied valuation of his stake in World Wide Technology increased. WWT is a private company, which means there are no public share prices to track and no SEC filings disclosing precise ownership stakes. What is confirmed is that Steward is the majority owner of a company that grew from $1 billion in combined revenue in 2003 to over $20 billion annually today — a 20x revenue increase over roughly two decades that reflects both disciplined execution and the extraordinary demand for enterprise IT services in the cloud and AI era. Unlike most tech billionaires who are tied to stock market fluctuations, Steward’s wealth is rooted in the durable cash flows of a private enterprise.

The Forbes self-made score of 10 out of 10 is not a marketing claim — it is a formally assessed designation that Forbes applies only to billionaires who started from scratch with no significant family capital or inherited advantages. Steward earned it by building WWT from a $250,000 initial investment — much of which was borrowed — into America’s largest Black-owned business, while growing up in Clinton, Missouri, a small town in what was then the segregated South, with a father who worked simultaneously as a mechanic, janitor, and trash collector. The #84 overall ranking on the 2024 Forbes 400 was the highest position any Black individual achieved on that list that year, and it placed Steward ahead of names like Michael Bloomberg and Ralph Lauren in terms of total net worth. That positioning — and what it means historically — is a data point that deserves far more recognition than it typically receives in mainstream business media.

Robert F. Smith and Top Black Finance Wealth Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Forbes 400 2024 (forbes.com); AfroTech — Robert F. Smith Second Richest Black Man in America (afrotech.com, Oct 2024); Bloomberg Billionaires Index profile of Robert F. Smith (bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/robert-f-smith); Wikipedia Robert F. Smith (en.wikipedia.org, Jan 2026); St. Louis American — Robert F. Smith Forbes profile (stlamerican.com)

Robert F. Smith’s position as the second-richest Black American in the US in 2026 is built on one of the most intellectually sophisticated wealth-creation models in American finance. His Vista Equity Partners does not invest in flashy consumer brands or social media companies — it focuses exclusively on enterprise software businesses, which are among the most cash-generative and defensible categories in technology. The firm’s portfolio includes workflow management, ticketing, education technology, and cybersecurity companies — unglamorous, durable cash machines that Vista buys, optimizes operationally, and holds for long-term value creation. The reported average annual return of ~30% since inception is a figure that would be extraordinary for any private equity firm; for one founded by a Black entrepreneur in Austin, Texas at a time when PE was almost entirely white and New York-based, it represents a genuine structural achievement against the grain of industry norms. Vista now manages over $100 billion in assets, making it one of the largest private equity firms in the United States by any measure.

The $139 million IRS settlement from Smith’s 2020 non-prosecution agreement is a documented part of his public record and cannot be omitted from a comprehensive profile. Smith admitted to filing false IRS returns, accepted the penalty, and cooperated with the Department of Justice in its case against Robert Brockman — a case Smith’s lawyers described as having been structured under circumstances he accepted too readily early in his career. His reputation has remained largely intact in the financial and philanthropic communities: he was listed on TIME100 Philanthropy’s 2025 list as one of the most influential philanthropic figures globally, under the “Titans” category for “lifting up young people of color.” The Morehouse College pledge of 2019 — in which he announced at the commencement ceremony that he would pay off the entire graduating class’s student loan debt of approximately $34 million — remains one of the most-watched acts of philanthropic generosity by any American billionaire in recent memory, and it set a tone for how Black billionaires are increasingly expected to direct resources back into Black communities and institutions.

Black Americans on the Forbes 400 — Historical Trend in the US 2026

Source: Forbes 400 Annual Lists 2001–2024 (forbes.com); UrbanGeekz — Four Black Billionaires on Forbes 400 (urbangeekz.com, Oct 2024); Black Girl Nerds — David Steward Forbes 400 profile (blackgirlnerds.com, Oct 2025); BusinessDay — Richest Black Person in America (businessday.ng, Feb 2025)

The historical trend of Black Americans on the Forbes 400 in the context of richest Black people in the US through 2026 is one of marginal progress against a backdrop of persistent underrepresentation. In the early 2000s, Bob Johnson — founder of BET — was largely the sole Black American to appear on the Forbes 400, and even then only sporadically as his fortune fluctuated around the qualifying threshold. The fact that by 2024, four Black Americans had cleared a $3.3 billion minimum threshold — the highest qualifying bar in the list’s 40-plus year history — is genuinely positive in isolation. Steward, Smith, Karp, and Jordan all made it in 2024, and their combined presence represents the most Black wealth ever documented on the Forbes 400 in absolute terms.

Yet the broader picture remains deeply sobering. The 400 wealthiest Americans in 2024 were worth a combined $5.4 trillion — a record figure. Of that $5.4 trillion, the four Black individuals on the list collectively held approximately $29 billion — about 0.54% of the total, despite Black Americans representing approximately 13.6% of the US population. This disparity has not narrowed meaningfully over the decade from 2014 to 2024: Black Americans have consistently represented between 1% and 1.5% of Forbes 400 members while comprising a far larger share of the overall population. The rising entry threshold year-on-year actually works against Black representation, since it requires exponentially greater wealth to qualify and most Black billionaire net worths are not growing fast enough relative to those of white billionaires whose equity in mega-cap tech companies is compounding at unprecedented rates.

Black-Owned Businesses Statistics in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Census Bureau — Annual Business Survey (ABS) reference year 2022, released December 19, 2024 (census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/employer-businesses.html); U.S. Census Bureau — ABS reference year 2023, released November 20, 2025 (census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/business-owner-characteristics.html); U.S. Census Bureau — Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D) reference year 2021, released August 8, 2024; Pew Research Center — A Look at Black-Owned Businesses in the US (pewresearch.org, Feb 12, 2025)

The Black-owned business statistics for the US through 2026 reveal a sector that has grown impressively in recent years while still commanding a disproportionately small share of overall US commercial activity. The 57% increase in Black-owned employer firms from 124,004 in 2017 to 194,585 in 2022 — documented by the US Census Bureau — is one of the most compelling growth stories in recent American economic data, and it significantly outpaced the national average for employer firm growth over the same period. The accompanying 66% revenue increase, from $127.9 billion to $211.8 billion, shows that these are not just more businesses — they are larger, more revenue-generating enterprises. The most recent ABS release from November 2025 covering reference year 2023 shows receipts reaching $249 billion, indicating the growth trajectory has continued beyond 2022. Together with 4.13 million nonemployer Black-owned businesses generating an additional $109.8 billion, the total Black business ecosystem represents a formidable and growing slice of the American economy.

The challenge is perspective. Despite impressive growth rates, Black-owned employer firms make up just 3.4% of all US employer businesses while Black Americans represent approximately 13.6% of the US population — a representation gap of roughly 4:1. Their receipts of $249 billion in 2023, while a record, represent a fraction of total US business receipts of approximately $50 trillion. The Federal Reserve’s 2024 Small Business Credit Survey found that only 28% of surveyed Black-owned employer firms reported operating at a profit at the end of 2022, compared to 50% of white-owned firms — a profitability gap that reflects persistent disparities in access to business credit, with 47% of Black business loan applicants being denied. The world’s largest Black-owned business, World Wide Technology, generating over $20 billion in annual revenue, stands as a singular outlier rather than a representative example — but it is a powerful proof of concept for what is possible when capital and talent meet the right opportunities.

Racial Wealth Gap Statistics in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Census Bureau — Wealth by Race report from SIPP data, released April 2024 (census.gov/library/stories/2024/04/wealth-by-race.html); Federal Reserve Board — Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty: Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances (federalreserve.gov, Oct 2023); Morningstar — 11 Charts Examining the Racial Wealth Gap (morningstar.com, Jan 2025); U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2023 income data

The racial wealth gap statistics for the US in 2026 — sourced directly from the US Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve — are among the most important and underdiscussed data points in American economic life. The 10:1 white-to-Black median wealth ratio documented in the US Census Bureau’s 2021 SIPP data is not merely a historical artifact: it is a live, ongoing measurement of how financial inequality compounds across generations. Black households in 2021 had a median wealth of just $24,520, compared to $250,400 for white households. That $225,880 gap — maintained in real terms across decades of economic expansion, policy interventions, and civil rights progress — represents the accumulated effect of restricted homeownership access, limited inheritance, lower rates of business ownership, reduced access to credit, and lower wages. The Federal Reserve’s SCF data for 2022 showed both wealth growing across all races, but the absolute dollar gap between white and Black median wealth actually widening by approximately $50,000 from 2019 to 2022, reaching over $220,000 — because when asset values rise, those with more assets gain more in absolute terms.

The downstream consequences of this wealth gap show up in every financial metric on the table. Black families have a homeownership rate of roughly 45%, compared to 72–74% for white families — a gap of nearly 30 percentage points that the Urban Institute notes is the largest since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. Only 34.8% of Black families held a retirement account in 2022, compared to 61.8% of white families — meaning nearly two-thirds of Black families have no dedicated retirement savings at all. And Black household median income of approximately $54,000 represents just 64% of white household median income, a gap that has barely moved over the past decade despite economic growth and employment gains. These statistics are the structural bedrock beneath the billionaire headline numbers: they explain why 23 Black billionaires globally and 11 in the US, no matter how inspiring their stories, have not yet translated into population-level wealth gains for Black Americans.

Black Billionaires — US vs. World Comparison in the US 2026

Source: Forbes World’s Billionaires 2025 — total Black billionaires count (forbes.com); PeopleOfColorInTech — The Top 10 Richest Black People in the World 2025 (peopleofcolorintech.com, Apr 2025) citing Forbes 2025 combined net worth of $96.2 billion; Wikipedia Black Billionaires (en.wikipedia.org, Jan 2026); Stacker — Meet America’s Black Billionaires (stacker.com, Feb 2, 2026)

The US vs. world comparison of Black billionaires in 2026 reveals that America is home to the largest cluster of Black billionaires on the planet by number — but that the overall representation of Black people in the global billionaire class remains almost negligibly small. 23 Black billionaires hold a combined $96.2 billion in wealth, per Forbes 2025 data. The total number of billionaires globally is 3,028, who together hold approximately $14–15 trillion in wealth. That means Black billionaires represent 0.8% of all billionaires and hold less than 0.7% of total billionaire wealth globally — despite Black people making up approximately 17% of the world’s total population. No other major demographic group has a representation gap this large between its share of global population and its share of global billionaire wealth.

Within the US specifically, the picture is equally stark. The 11 US Black billionaires identified in the Stacker analysis of Forbes data as of February 2, 2026 collectively hold $52.1 billion. To put that figure in context: Elon Musk alone was worth approximately $677 billion as of the same Bloomberg Billionaires Index data pull. The combined wealth of all 11 Black American billionaires is less than 8% of a single individual’s fortune. This is not a criticism of any individual — it is a precise numerical illustration of how concentrated wealth is in America, and how far the structural wealth-building conditions need to shift before Black Americans can achieve meaningful proportional representation at the highest levels of US economic life. The growth of Black tech founders — Tope Awotona (Calendly), whose startup reached a $3 billion valuation in 2021, and the broader wave of Black founders being backed by venture capital at higher rates than ever before — represents the most promising pathway to changing this ratio over the coming decade.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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