Forbes Richest Person In Every State 2025
For the third straight year, Forbes has scoured the nation to find the richest person in every state. We again found billionaires in all but three. The 54 entrepreneurs, investors and heirs on the 2025 ranking (including ties) are worth a record $2 trillion combined, up $400 billion since last year's list.
Five states have a new no. 1—all because one rich resident has overtaken another, rather than the high-profile, out-of-state moves that have shaken things up in past years. Among the states whose wealthiest person changed in 2025 is Missouri, where the richest Black American, IT mogul David Steward (estimated net worth: $11.4 billion) of St. Louis-based World Wide Technology, has surpassed John Morris ($9.6 billion) of Springfield-based Bass Pro Shops.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Arkansas, Bentonville-based Walmart heir Rob Walton ($113 billion) takes the title from his brother Jim Walton ($112 billion). The world's wealthiest woman, their sister Alice Walton ($104 billion), remains a distant second in Texas, behind the world's wealthiest person, Elon Musk ($388 billion), who moved to the Lone Star State from California in 2020.
Across the country in Washington, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ($118 billion) beats out his old boss Bill Gates ($108 billion), after Forbes upped its estimate of the 2021 divorce settlement secured by Gates' ex-wife Melinda French Gates ($30.2 billion). French Gates now ranks as the third richest person in the Evergreen State, one spot ahead of MacKenzie Scott ($26.7 billion), whose ex-husband Jeff Bezos ($206 billion) of Amazon has been Florida's wealthiest resident since announcing his move from Washington to Miami in 2023.
In Wisconsin, Diane Hendricks ($21.9 billion) is one of 10 women who are the richest residents of their respective states, up from nine last year. The Republican megadonor and cofounder of Beloit-based roofing giant ABC Supply, overtakes John Menard, Jr. ($21.5 billion), who founded the Eau Claire-based home improvement chain Menard's. And then there's New Jersey, where hedge fund tycoon John Overdeck ($7.4 billion) reclaims his state's top spot from cable TV mogul Rocco Commisso ($5.8 billion), an Italian immigrant who moved with his family to New York City at age 12 in 1962.
While at least one of America's 868 billionaires can be found in almost every state, nearly two-thirds of them live in just four: California (194), New York (137), Florida (116) and Texas (81), where the competition for the top spot is particularly tough. That's especially true in the Golden State, which is home to four of the seven richest Americans, including Oracle's Larry Ellison ($175 billion) and Alphabet's Larry Page ($135 billion) and Sergey Brin ($129 billion), who are all too poor to make this year's list, given Palo Alto resident Mark Zuckerberg's $189 billion fortune. In contrast, 10 states have just one billionaire: Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont.
Alaska, Delaware and West Virginia are still the only states without a billionaire, though Brad Smith, the retired CEO of Intuit and current president of Marshall University, is knocking on the door in the Mountain State, with an estimated $900 million net worth. Smith has been West Virginia's richest person since the 2023 ranking, when he overtook the state's former billionaire governor and current U.S. senator Jim Justice, who Forbes now estimates is broke and buried under more than $1 billion of debt and other liabilities.
Forbes Richest Person In Every State 2025
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