Inside America’s $500 Billion Family
From left to right: Rob Walton, Alice Walton, and Jim Walton.
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
By Matt Durot,
Forbes Staff.
I write about the world’s richest people and their businesses.
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Jul 04, 2026, 06:30am EDT
The descendants of Walmart’s founders Sam and Bud Walton are now worth half-a-trillion dollars—three times as much as America’s second wealthiest family.
On Monday, Forbes published its second-ever ranking of America’s Decabillionaire families, featuring 54 multi-generational clans worth at least $10 billion apiece. The richest family in the country by far is the Waltons, whose fortune has nearly doubled since our last list in February 2024, surging by an estimated $253 billion, to $520 billion, as shares of Walmart have skyrocketed. The discount juggernaut became the first brick-and-mortar retailer to boast a $1 trillion market cap in February 2026, and while the stock has since cooled, it’s still more than doubled in the past two-and-a-half years.
The descendants of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based business’ founder Sam Walton (d. 1992) and his brother Bud Walton (d. 1995) are now more than three times as rich as America’s second wealthiest clan, the Kochs of Koch, Inc. (formerly Koch Industries), who are worth an estimated $157 billion. The Waltons' combined wealth is second only to that of Elon Musk, who became the world’s first trillionaire in June and is now worth an estimated $997 billion.
Most of the Waltons’ fortune comes from the nearly 39% stake in Walmart that Forbes estimates is owned through two holding companies by Sam Walton’s three living children–Rob Walton, Jim Walton and Alice Walton–and their families, as well their brother John Walton’s (d. 2005) widow Christy Walton and only child Lukas Walton. That stake was worth $359 billion on June 22, when Forbes locked in this year’s ranking, accounting for nearly four-fifths of the estimated $463 billion net worth of Sam’s side of the Walton family. (And that’s excluding a nearly 6% stake in Walmart, worth $51.3 billion, that Forbes estimates is owned by charitable trusts in the name of John Walton through the same two holding companies.)
The rest of Sam’s side’s fortune is a combination of cash and other investments from Walmart dividends and stock sales over the years, and increasingly sports teams. Rob Walton and his family, for instance, own 94% of the $6.8 billion (enterprise value) Denver Broncos, and Lukas Walton just acquired a minority stake in the Chicago Bulls in June.
Bud Walton’s side of the family, meanwhile, is worth an estimated $57 billion. That includes a nearly 3% stake in Walmart, worth $23.7 billion, that Forbes estimates is owned by Bud’s daughters Nancy Walton Laurie and Ann Walton Kroenke. It also counts the estimated $24.3 billion fortune of Ann’s real estate and sports mogul husband, Stan Kroenke.
Rob Walton (right) with his daughter Carrie Walton Penner and son-in-law Greg Penner.
Aarom Ontiveroz/Media News Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Sam Walton’s side of the family would be even richer if, after decades of hanging onto almost all of their Walmart shares, their holding companies hadn’t started selling and gifting large amounts of the retailer’s stock in 2015, in order to fund philanthropy and to keep massive share repurchases by Walmart from pushing the family’s ownership stake (including the stock owned by John Walton’s charitable trusts) above 50%, which would have been worth nearly $470 billion on June 22. Since then, the family’s holding companies have sold Walmart stock worth around $37 billion (before taxes) at the time of the share sales. Meanwhile, the living descendants of Sam Walton have also made charitable contributions worth at least $12.2 billion at the time of the gifts (most of it in Walmart stock) to 15 family foundations since 2015 (including 13 new nonprofits launched by members of the second and third generation since 2015). The Waltons’ foundations have doled out an estimated $5 billion of those funds through 2024 (the year of the nonprofits’ most recent tax returns).
Prior to 2015, almost all of the Waltons’ philanthropy was done through the Walton Family Foundation and a smaller nonprofit that it funds called the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation. Those nonprofits received virtually all of their $5.2 billion in funding from 2001 through 2014 from John Walton’s charitable trusts and trusts in the name of his late mother Helen Walton (which Forbes estimates received what would be a nearly 3% stake in Walmart today four years after Helen died in 2007). Altogether, John and Helen’s trusts have contributed $10.1 billion of the $11.8 billion that went into the family’s two original foundations from 2001 through 2024, and the nonprofits have paid out $11.3 billion to charitable organizations during that same period.
Sam and Helen Walton set up the Walton Family Foundation in 1987, the year Walmart celebrated its 25th anniversary. The couple saw the nonprofit as a way to strengthen and bring the family together as they focused on ways to give back. And while their children and grandchildren didn’t start chipping in significant amounts of their own money until 2015, the Waltons’ second and third generations were encouraged to get involved in overseeing the foundation from the very beginning. In 2016, the nonprofit’s board was slimmed down from 19 family members from Sam’s side of the Walton family to just five. Today, it consists of four: Lukas, Rob’s daughter Carrie Walton Penner, Jim’s son Tom Walton, and Jim’s daughter Annie Proietti, who has served as chair since 2020.
"They knew that as Walmart grew, we wouldn't be all coming together for the business," Walton Penner, who was the foundation’s first program officer and its chair from 2016 until 2020, told Forbes in a rare interview in 2014.
The Waltons’ original nonprofit was also set up two years after Sam had been named the richest person in America by Forbes, a title he did not particularly like. Around that time, he described how he was overwhelmed by the media attention and the fascination with his wealth rather than his business success.
Alice Walton (right) with her brother Jim's daughter-in-law Olivia Walton (left).
Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
Sam’s reaction was not entirely surprising given that he grew up during the Great Depression and learned the meaning of hard work early on, delivering milk from his family’s cows and selling magazine subscriptions as a kid. Never one to waste money, his first office was a small room above his original Bentonville store, with a desk jerry-built from two filing cabinets and a piece of plywood, and he drove a beat-up Ford F-150 pickup truck long after Walmart became a billion dollar business. “One thing my mother and dad shared completely was their approach to money—they just didn't spend it,” Sam famously wrote about his own parents in his best-selling 1992 autobiography. Plus, as Forbes wrote in 1982, Sam’s management style was “as much press-the-flesh as watch-the-pennies,” known for spending much of his time visiting stores and chatting regularly with staffers–hundreds of whom he knew on a first-name basis.
Sam’s descendants seem to have inherited not only a fortune from the family patriarch but also his reluctance to discuss the Waltons’ wealth, going to great lengths to keep a relatively low-profile despite being America’s richest clan.
Here are the eight members of the Walton family on Forbes’ billionaires list (net worths are as of June 22):
Sam Walton’s Side of Family
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Rob Walton & family
Net Worth: $136 billion
Age: 81
Family Includes: sons Sam Walton, Ben Walton; daughter Carrie Walton Penner
A Columbia University-trained lawyer, the eldest child of Sam Walton helped Walmart prepare for its IPO in 1970. Rob took over as chairman upon his father's death in 1992, and served in that role until 2015, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Greg Penner. Rob retired from Walmart's board for good in 2024. A group led by Rob, Penner, and Rob’s daughter Carrie Walton Penner bought the NFL's Denver Broncos for $4.7 billion in 2022, and Rob transferred controlling ownership of the franchise to Penner in 2023. Then in 2024, Rob reportedly acquired a 10% stake in the MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks in a deal that valued the franchise at $2 billion. His daughter Carrie, a charter school education advocate, served as chair of the family’s $8.6 billion (2024 assets) Walton Family Foundation from 2016 until 2020, when she was succeeded by her cousin Annie Proietti.
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Jim Walton & family
Net Worth: $133 billion
Age: 78
Family includes: sons Steuart Walton, Tom Walton, James Walton; daughter Annie Proietti
The youngest son of Sam Walton is chairman of $27 billion (assets) Arvest Bank Group, which was founded in 1961, when the family patriarch bought the $3.5 million (assets) Bank of Bentonville. Today, Arvest Bank Group boasts more than 200 branches across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Jim sat on Walmart's board for more than a decade before yielding the seat to his son, Steuart, in 2016.
A trained pilot and aviation enthusiast, Steuart paid $131 million through his charitable foundation to acquire Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s (d. 2018) Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington in 2022. His brother Tom’s wife, Olivia Walton, is founder & CEO of Ingeborg Investments, which funds female startup founders focused on empowering women. In May, Olivia also launched a campaign by a Walton nonprofit called Heartland Forward that will seek to cut U.S. maternal mortality in half within five years.
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Alice Walton
Net Worth: $125 billion
Age: 76
The only daughter of Sam Walton is twice divorced and never had any children. She has focused most of her life on philanthropy and curating art. Alice is best known for founding the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville in 2011 and for chairing its board until 2021, when she was succeeded by her nephew Tom’s wife Olivia Walton. Nearly all of the $1.6 billion it cost to open the facility came from trusts in the names of Alice’s brother John Walton (d. 2005) and mother Helen Walton (d. 2007). But Alice has ramped up her own philanthropy over the past decade, pouring more than $6 billion (nearly a third of it Walmart stock) into five family charitable foundations that have doled out an estimated $2 billion of Alice’s funds through 2024 (the year of the nonprofits’ most recent tax returns). That makes her the top giver among the living Walton family members, and America’s 26th most generous philanthropist based on her “out-the-door” giving through the nonprofits. Among her biggest gifts was $250 million to the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, which welcomed its first class of 48 four-year MD students to campus last July.
The Walton Family Foundation
Lukas Walton
Net Worth: $45.7 billion
Age: 39
The only child of Sam Walton’s late son John Walton, Lukas inherited one-third of his father’s 25% stake in the holding companies that own the Waltons’ Walmart shares after John died in a 2005 plane crash. Lukas’ mother Christy Walton inherited one-sixth of her late husband’s estate and the rest went to charitable trusts in John’s name. While Lukas owns stakes in Walmart and Arvest Bank Group, he has never worked for either company. Lukas, who studied environmental science and economics at Colorado College, is the founder and executive chairman of a sustainability-focused philanthropic and impact-investing platform called Builders Vision. Launched in 2018, it now manages over $15 billion. A resident of The Windy City, Lukas acquired a minority stake in the NBA’s Chicago Bulls in June.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Christy Walton
Net Worth: $22.7 billion
Age: 77
The widow of John Walton and mother of Lukas Walton leads a very private life in Jackson, Wyoming. Christy donated $665,000 to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project politial action committee from 2020 through 2025. She also placed a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting the “No Kings” protest against President Trump in 2025, forcing Walmart to issue a statement distancing the company from Christy’s ad. She is also the founder of iAlumbra, a network of non-profit and for-profit organizations focused on the environment and community well-being. In a 2008 interview with the San Diego Tribune, Christy attributed the elimination of a cancerous tumor that Lukas developed as a young child to an all-organic, plant and herb-based diet.
Bud Walton’s Side of Family
Scott Rudd/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
Nancy Walton Laurie
Net Worth: $18.5 billion
Age: 75
Forbes estimates that the youngest of the two daughters of Sam Walton’s brother Bud owns a nearly 2% stake in Walmart, which she inherited and has held onto since her father’s death in 1995. Neither Nancy nor her sister Ann Walton Kroenke have ever had any involvement with the retailer. Instead, Nancy and her husband Bill Laurie own a portfolio of commercial real estate, several homes and a superyacht called Kaos that was twice vandalized by climate and anti-billionaire protestors in 2023. The Walton Laurie family also owned the NHL’s St. Louis Blues from 1999 to 2006.
Jerritt Clark/Wireimage/Getty Images; Michael Regan/Premier League/Getty Images
Ann Walton Kroenke
Net Worth: $14 billion
Age: 77
Stan Kroenke
Net Worth: $24.3 billion
Age: 78
Bud Walton’s other daughter, Ann Walton Kroenke, married Stan Kroenke, in the early 1970s. Forbes estimates that Ann, a registered nurse, has sold around half the Walmart stock she inherited from her father over the years and now owns a nearly 1% stake in the retailer. Meanwhile, her husband has built a real estate and sports empire of his own. He controls some 60 million square feet of commercial property–much of it shopping plazas near Walmart stores–and is reportedly the country’s largest landowner, with 2.7 million acres of mostly ranchland to his name. He also owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, the MLS’s Colorado Rapids and England’s Arsenal Football Club.
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