An AI-driven stock market boom. A flush luxury real estate market. Favorable tax policies.
The economy may not be working very well for everyone, but wealthy people — both in the U.S. and around the world — are generally doing great. And the world’s richest are actually doing better than ever, according to Forbes’ new 2026 billionaires analysis. The financial publication’s team counted more than 3,400 billionaires this year, with a total wealth of over $20 trillion, both records.
And North Texas, in the middle of its own long-running wealth boom, figured prominently in the list — 38 billionaires have strong ties to the region, according to a count by The Dallas Morning News, including three women who all rank among the world’s 100 richest people. Here are some of the most notable and newsworthy D-FW billionaires, ordered by wealth. (Note that net worth tallies are rounded, and Forbes’ list updates frequently.)
Alice Walton, $134B. Global rank: 14. North Texas rank: 1
The 76-year-old is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. She’s also the 14th richest person in the world, and by far the richest person tied to North Texas. Walton, an art collector and booster, has backed multiple art initiatives in Fort Worth, where she lives, and previously owned the nearly 1,500-acre Rocking W Ranch near the border of Parker and Palo Pinto counties. She’s also started a medical school and opened a museum, although those initiatives were in Bentonville, Ark., the small city where Walmart has its headquarters.
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Elaine Marshall and family, $31B. Global rank: 71. North Texas rank: 2
Marshall’s fortune came through Kansas-based Koch Industries, which ranks as the country’s second-largest private company by annual revenue. Marshall’s ties to the company come through her late husband E. Pierce Marshall, the son of an early partner of Fred Koch, who founded an oil refinery firm that eventually morphed into Koch Industries. Pierce Marshall was reportedly a “modest, buttoned-down Dallasite” who got wrapped up in salacious headlines because of his elderly father’s marriage to the Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.
Elaine Marshall, who is 83 and lives in Dallas, ranks as Forbes’ 71st wealthiest person in the world, although she’s previously told The News that public estimates of her family’s wealth were wildly overstated. “This is ridiculous,” she said in 2013, when a Bloomberg assessment put her net worth at nearly $15 billion. “But it doesn’t affect me or how I live.”
Lyndal Stephens Greth and family, $30B. Global rank: 77. North Texas rank: 3
North Texas’s third-wealthiest person is also a woman. Lyndal Stephens Greth, a 51-year-old Dallasite, got rich through oil and gas. Her father was Autry Stephens, the Texas mogul who founded Endeavor Energy Resources, which emerged as a powerhouse oil exploration and production firm in the Permian Basin. In 2024, the company was sold to Diamondback Energy for approximately $26 billion; Stephens Greth, a longtime board member, also briefly chaired the company that year after her father’s death. Forbes ranks Stephens Greth at number 77.
Stanley Kroenke, $22B. Global rank: 114. North Texas rank: 4
You may know the 78-year-old Kroenke, who came in at number 114 on Forbes’ list, as the NFL owner who moved the St. Louis Rams to LA — or as the owner of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, the MLS’ Colorado Rapids or the Premier League’s Arsenal FC.
But Kroenke — who decades ago married into the Walton family and subsequently built his own fortune as one of the country’s most prolific commercial real estate developers — also has North Texas ties. Several years ago, Kroenke made headlines for purchasing the iconic, roughly 520,000-acre W.T. Waggoner Ranch near Vernon. The sale price was undisclosed, although the property had been listed at $725 million. Forbes lists Kroenke’s residence in nearby Electra. His wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, came in at number 197 on Forbes’ list, or 6th among North Texans.
Jerry Jones, $20B. Global rank: 124. North Texas rank: 5
The 83-year-old onetime oil wildcatter and longtime Cowboys owner came in as Forbes’ 124th richest person. Much of that wealth comes from the Cowboys: Despite another disappointing season, America’s Team remains incredibly rich. Recent estimates have put the team’s worth at $13 billion — the most valuable sports franchise in the world. Part of the key, analysts say, is Jones’ intrinsic understanding of the “attention economy” — and pop culture phenomena like the Netflix hit “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” have kept the team in the zeitgeist.
“Some years they’ll be good, and some years they’ll be bad,” Brad Sham, a longtime radio commentator for the team, told The News last year, “but they’ll never be boring.”
Andrew Beal, $13B. Global rank: 238. North Texas rank: 8
Beal, who dropped out of Baylor and moonlights as a high-stakes poker player, is one of Texas’ most well-known bankers. He made a fortune during the Great Recession by buying distressed assets, and the parent company of Dallas-based Beal Bank has assets of more than $22 billion, according to Forbes. Recently, he’s also stirred local real estate controversy: Beal, 73, bought the Edwin Cox estate, near the Dallas Country Club in Highland Park, in 2021, in a deal that ranked as one of the priciest ever for a local home.
Then he tore the century-old mansion down, sparking some strong negative reactions, and petitioned the city to amend a height ordinance in order to erect a cupola on the new home he planned to build, which led to more neighborhood opposition. Beal later dropped the request.
Ray Lee Hunt, $7B. Global rank: 623. North Texas rank: 11
The son of one of Texas’ most famous wildcatters — and owner of one of Dallas’ most prominent last names — is now 82 and serves as chairman emeritus of Hunt Consolidated, the corporate umbrella for a family dynasty whose projects now range from oil and gas to real estate, power and ranching.
Last year, Hunt, who previously served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, also weighed in on Dallas’ future, writing a letter in support of regulatory approval for the incoming Texas Stock Exchange that argued the exchange was necessary because of Texas’ emerging status as a corporate capital and “the number of new companies in Texas that may eventually seek to go public.”
Ross Perot Jr., $7B. Global rank: 645. North Texas rank: 12
The 67-year-old real estate scion, U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice chairman and son of the country’s most famous third-party presidential candidate remains one of Dallas’ biggest personalities and newsmakers. In the past few months alone, Perot Jr. has generated headlines as he’s dished publicly on ChatGPT, opined on the future of the Mavs and entertained a local business audience with stories about his dad and Taylor Sheridan. His company has been chugging along, too, as it continues to expand its massive AllianceTexas mixed-use development and industrial hub, also the home of Alliance Airport.
Mark Cuban, $6B. Global rank: 694. North Texas rank: 14
Despite what you may have heard, the 67-year-old former majority Mavs owner and longtime Shark Tank host is not buying back the team from current majority owners Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont. But he still has plenty of opinions: In February, after the NBA dished out tanking-related fines to the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers, Cuban generated his own buzz by writing on social media that the league should “embrace” the controversial practice, even suggesting that under his leadership it had led to the Mavs’ later acquisition of Luka Doncic.
Timothy Headington, $1B. Global rank: 3,017. North Texas rank: 37
The 75-year-old Headington has long been one of Dallas’ most interesting magnates — and of Downtown Dallas’ biggest boosters. Headington earned a fortune in the oil business, selling his land in North Dakota’s Bakken fields to XTO Energy in 2008, and subsequently went on to produce and fund numerous movies, including local films as well as major Hollywood hits like “Argo” and “World War Z.”
Through his commercial real estate fir, he’s also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Downtown projects, revitalizing the Joule Hotel and developing various apartment buildings and shops. His latest project is something different: Shyboy, the Main Street basement music club that was modeled after Japanese jazz kisas and opened earlier this month.