What is Mark Cuban's net worth?
Mark Cuban is a remarkably successful American entrepreneur who has a net worth of $5.5 billion. Mark Cuban earned his first small fortune thanks to a company called MicroSolutions. He then earned billions selling a company called Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble. Mark used his multi-billion dollar fortune to buy the Dallas Mavericks, Magnolia Pictures, and Landmark Theaters. He is chairman of HDNet, an HDTV Cable Network, and co-owner of 2929 Entertainment.
Mark is also known for being one of the longtime hosts of CNBC's reality business program "Shark Tank." Mark began hosting Shark Tank in 2011. In November 2023, he announced he would step down after filming one more season of the show.
Cuban is very philanthropic and gives freely to many charities, especially to the Fallen Patriot Plan which helps the families of fallen soldiers.
On November 28, 2023, it was revealed that Mark had reached a deal to sell a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to casino billionaire Miriam Adelson and her family at a $3.5 billion valuation. Miriam is the widow of Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson. Miriam sold $2 billion worth of Las Vegas Sands stock, 10% of her total holdings, in anticipation of the deal. Mark bought the Mavericks in 2000 from Ross Perot for $285 million.
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Early Life
He was born July 31, 1958, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a Jewish working-class family in the suburb of Mount Lebanon. He has two brothers, Brian and Jeff. Cuban found his entrepreneurial spirit early. When he was 12, he sold garbage bags to make enough money to buy an expensive pair of basketball shoes. Later, he made money selling stamps and coins.
When he was 16, he took advantage of a newspaper strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by going to Cleveland to get newspapers and bringing them to Pittsburgh.
Cuban skipped his senior year of high school and enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh, where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. After one year at Pitt, he transferred to Indiana University. He graduated from IU's Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a B.S. in Management.
Early Career
On July 7, 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, where he worked as a bartender and as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired less than a year later when he met with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.
MicroSolutions
Cuban founded MicroSolutions with support from his previous customers at Your Business Software. MicroSolutions was initially a software reseller and system integrator. One of Cuban's largest clients was Perot Systems. He grew the company to more than $30 million in revenue. In 1990, he sold MicroSolutions to Compuserve for $6 million. He netted about $2 million on the deal after taxes.
American Airlines Unlimited Pass
On the night the deal closed, Mark and his co-founders and friends went to a steakhouse to celebrate. During drinks someone asked Mark what he was going to do with his new wealth. The steakhouse had a phone on the table. Mark picked up the phone, dialed American Airlines, and purchased an unlimited lifetime pass for $250,000. He later purchased a companion pass for $150,000. By 1994, American Airlines had discontinued offering these passes, but Mark was still able to fly anywhere in the world on a moment's notice for free without a reservation. American stopped offering the passes after one owner used his to fly more than 40 million miles.
American allows its remaining 20-30 lifetime pass owners to gift the passes to someone else one time. Mark ultimately gifted his pass to his father, and then after his father passed away, the pass was gifted to a friend.
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Broadcast.com
In 1995, Cuban, Chris Jaeb, and Todd Wagner started Audionet. All three were alumni of Indiana University, and the company combined their mutual interest in Indiana Hoosier basketball and webcasting. With just one server and an ISDN line, the company became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, the company had grown to 330 employees and $13.5 million in revenue. In 1999, Broadcast.com launched the first live-streamed Victoria's Secret Fashion show. That same year, the company was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock.
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Predicting the Dotcom Bubble Burst
Mark's smartest financial move of all time was being able to foresee that the dotcom bubble would eventually burst. On the day the Broadcast deal officially closed, Yahoo's stock was trading at $163 per share. Six months later, when Cuban's lockup agreement expired, the price per share was roughly the same.
However, Cuban's firm belief that the internet bubble was about to burst led him to sell 100% of his Yahoo shares as soon as he was his lockup expired.
This move netted Mark $2.5 billion in cash.
Over the next year and a half as the bubble eventually burst, Yahoo's stock price slid from $100 to $70 to $50 to $30.
By October 2001, Yahoo hit an all-time low of $8.11 per share. That's a 95% drop compared to $163 a share when Cuban sold. In other words, Mark's $2.5 billion worth of stock could have become worth as little as $125 million. Still a nice fortune, but not enough to buy an NBA team, movie studio, cable network, private jets…
Dallas Mavericks
Mark bought the Dallas Mavericks from Ross Perot for $285 million in 2000. Mark had no partners in the deal. The Mavericks won the 2011 NBA Championship. In November 2023, it was revealed that Mark had reached a deal to sell a majority of the Mavericks to casino heiress Miriam Adelson at a $3.5 billion valuation.
Landmark Theatres
On September 24, 2003, Cuban purchased Landmark Theatres, a chain of 58 art-house movie theaters.
Shark Tank
Mark has been one of the main hosts of Shark Tank since season two. The top three deals Cuban has made on "Shark Tank" all saw him investing at least $1 million. Those deals are Ten Thirty-One Productions, Rugged Maniac Obstacle Race, and BeatBox Beverages. The ratings for Shark Tank have increased since Cuban joined the show in 2011. Additionally, "Shark Tank" has won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Structured Reality Program while Cuban has been a part of it.
Cost Plus Drugs
In 2022, Mark Cuban started the Cost Plus Drugs Company to help combat the high prices of prescription drugs in the United States. The goal was to not only reduce costs but also provide transparency into the pricing of drugs.
Amazon Stake
In September 2019, Mark revealed that he owns nearly $1 billion worth of Amazon stock. It is his biggest stock holding. Netflix is reportedly his second-biggest stock holding.
Private Jet Purchase
The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction" after he paid $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in October 1999.
Personal Life
His paternal grandfather changed the family's last name from Chabenisky to Cuban after his family emigrated from Russia through Ellis Island.
In September 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart in a private ceremony in Barbados. They have two daughters: one born in 2003, the other born in 2006, and a son born in 2010. The family lives in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas.
In 2003, Cuban founded the Fallen Patriot Fund to help families of U.S. military personnel killed or injured during the Iraq War. He personally matched the first $1 million in contributions from the Mark Cuban Foundation.
In June 2015 Cuban made a $5 million donation to Indiana University at Bloomington for the "Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology", which will be built inside Assembly Hall, the school's basketball arena.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuban took to LinkedIn to offer advice and help to small businesses trying to stay afloat despite lockdown. Also, in 2020, Mark Cuban picked up homeless former NBA player Delonte West and paid for a hotel room and his drug treatment program.
Mark Cuban's streaming platform, Fireside, confirmed a $25 million Series A at a $138 million valuation in April 2023.
Real Estate
Mark and his family live in a 24,000-square-foot mansion in Dallas.
In December 2018, Cuban paid $19 million for a beachfront California mansion. It was the highest-priced sale in Laguna Beach's exclusive Montage Residences community in 2018. The 7,867 square foot home has six bedrooms, seven and three-quarters bathrooms, a pool, and walls of windows that open up to the outside space and clear views of the beach and ocean.
