Richard and Nancy Kinder in 2022 in Houston. Richard Kinder ranks No. 100 on the 2026 Forbes 400, an annual ranking of the wealthiest Americans.
Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer
There are 43 Texans on this year’s Forbes 400 list, from Elon Musk (worth $908 billion) and Michael Dell ($263 billion) to grocery magnate Charles Butt ($11.3 billion) and private equity executive Carl Thoma of Dallas, ranked No. 380 with a net worth of $4.5 billion.
Overall, Forbes said, the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth $8 trillion this year, up from $6.6 trillion a year ago.
Musk’s net worth has dipped since June, when the initial public offering of his company SpaceX made him the world’s first official trillionaire, for a spell. Still, Musk has an estimated net worth of $908 billion, a fortune that dwarfs that of runner-up Jeff Bezos: the Amazon founder is currently worth just $370 billion, according to Forbes.
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WEALTH: 18 Houston billionaires — and one icon — make Forbes ranking of world’s wealthiest people in 2026
“The wealth gap is widening even among the ultra-rich,” Forbes notes. “The wealth controlled by the top 20 is massive: they account for $4 trillion of the total, up $970 billion from last year.”
The magazine’s annual ranking of the wealthiest people in the United States includes eight Houstonians. Here’s who they are.
Jeffery Hildebrand
Hildebrand, founder of independent oil driller Hilcorp Energy, ranks as the wealthiest person in Houston and No. 88 on the Forbes 400, with a net worth of $14.7 billion. His wife, Melinda “Mindy” Hildebrand, is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica.
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Ellen Cohen, left, Mindy Hildebrand, center, and Oliver Pennington cut the inauguration ribbon of the Memorial Park Running Trails Center in 2014.
Marie D. De Jesús/Houston Chronicle
Richard Kinder
Kinder, co-founder of Kinder Morgan, an energy infrastructure company, ranks No. 100 on the Forbes 400, with an estimated net worth of $12.9 billion. He and his wife Nancy are revered in Houston for their philanthropy, and recently reiterated their plans to give away most of their fortune. t
Dan Friedkin
Friedkin, who built his fortune in auto dealerships and has since diversified into sports and entertainment, ranks as the No. 102 wealthiest American, with an estimated net worth of $12.7 billion. He is currently in negotiations to possibly bring an NHL expansion franchise to Houston.
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Tilman Fertitta
Fertitta, currently serving as U.S. Ambassador to Italy, ranks just behind Friedkin at No. 103 on the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $12.6 billion. His company, Fertitta Entertainment. is set to acquire Caesars Entertainment in a $17.6 billion deal.
Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta laughs as he sits courtside during an NBA playoff game against the Golden State Warriors at Toyota Center in Houston in 2025.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Randa Duncan Williams, Dannine Avara, Milane Frantz and Scott Duncan
The four siblings are each worth nearly $12 billion, having inherited a share of Enterprise Products Partners, the pipeline company founded by their father, Dan Duncan. Randa Duncan Williams is the only sibling involved in running the company, Forbes notes, having joined it in 1994 and currently serving as chair of the board of directors.
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Randa Duncan Williams, a Houston billionaire and philanthropist.
Handout / Texas Monthly
Forbes’s broader list of all world billionaires, released in April, included 18 Houstonians, as well as Beyoncé, who is technically a resident of New York and recently became a billionaire in her own right, with a current net worth of $1 billion. (Her husband, Jay-Z, reached that threshold in 2019 and has a current net worth of $2.8 billion, according to the magazine.)
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Another Houstonian, private equity executive David Capobianco, crossed into ten-figure territory this summer, but has subsequently seen his net worth sag and does not appear on the Forbes real-time billionaires list.
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As of Sept. 23rd, according to Forbes, there are 3,409 billionaires in the world.