(NEXSTAR) — You can probably name some of the richest people in the country: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett. But do you know the wealthiest person in North Carolina?
Unless you have a few billion dollars lying around, it likely isn’t you.
As part of its full list of the wealthiest person in each state and their estimated net worth. For North Carolina, the richest person is the CEO of SAS Institute, an analytics software firm based in Cary.
According to Forbes, he cofounded SAS back in 1976 alongside John Sall. The duo met while Goodnight was a PhD student at NC State.
Today, products created by SAS are used by more than 80,800 organizations around the world.
The company’s total revenues for 2022 topped out at just more than $3 billion. As of the latest rankings from Forbes, Goodnight has a net worth of $8.5 billion.
Below is a list of the richest people in each state, as well as their net worth, according to Forbes.
Every year, Forbes releases a list of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. This includes those who have garnered their wealth through investments, software, sports, retail, real estate, family ties, and food.
The 2023 list includes some notable firsts. Michael Jordan, for instance, is the first professional athlete to land on the Forbes 400. His off-the-court income, namely from his deals with Nike and the sale of his stake in the Charlotte Hornets, propelled him onto this year’s list. Another newcomer is Josh Kushner, the son of real estate developer Charles Kushner and brother of Jared Kushner.
The latter Kushner’s father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, failed to make the Forbes 400 this year. Another name to fall off the list this year was Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently facing federal charges.
To make the list this year, billionaires needed at least $2.9 billion. As a whole, the Forbes 400 hold $4.5 trillion in wealth.
At the top of the list was Elon Musk, worth an estimated $251 billion thanks to his companies Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter). It also makes him the wealthiest person in Texas, one of the 40 states represented on the list. The states without a representative were Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia.
As it did last year, California had the most residents on the list with 87 — an increase of seven residents over 2022. New York sports the second most at 62, followed by Texas with 53, Florida at 46, and Illinois with 13. Ten states, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands, had just one resident landing on the list: Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Utah.
There were 60 women who landed among the wealthiest Americans this year. Texas’ Alice Walton, the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, ranks as the wealthiest with a net worth of $66.5 billion, Forbes reports. She flipped places with Julia Koch, who, with her three children, inherited a 42% stake in Koch Industries after her husband David passed away in 2019. They’re worth an estimated $59.8 billion.
You can view the full list on Forbes’ website here. This was the publication’s 42st edition of the Forbes 400.
