Dan Gilbert, co-founder and chairman of Rocket Mortgage and owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, is ranked No. 90 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, tied with Lei Jun and Andreas von Bechtolsheim, with a net worth of $27.9 billion.
Daniel Bruce Gilbert was born on January 17, 1962, in Detroit, Michigan, to a Jewish family. His father, Sam, owned a Detroit bar, Sakesy’s. At 12 he organised a pizza delivery service in which children on bikes delivered in the neighbourhood. He grew up in Southfield, Michigan, earned his bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University and a law degree at Wayne State University Law School.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 90 (tied with Lei Jun and Andreas von Bechtolsheim), with $27.9 billion
- Earlier estimate: Forbes put him at $22.5 billion in May 2025, 88th in the world, according to Wikipedia
Rocket Mortgage
- 1985: he founded Rock Financial with Ron Berman, Lindsay Gross and his younger brother Gary Gilbert; in the late 1990s it became an early online direct mortgage lender
- 2000–2002: Intuit bought it and renamed the web operation Quicken Loans; in 2002 Gilbert and private investors bought Quicken Loans back from Intuit
- 2010: the company moved its headquarters and 1,700 employees to downtown Detroit, where Gilbert and the firm have helped to lead a revival of the urban core
- 2017: it became the largest US retail mortgage lender by volume
- August 2020: it listed on the New York Stock Exchange as Rocket Companies (RKT), with Gilbert as the majority owner
Sports and Investments
In 2005 Gilbert bought the Cleveland Cavaliers for $375 million, then a record price for an NBA team, and he also owns the Cleveland Charge and the Cleveland Monsters. He founded Rock Ventures, which holds his investments and real estate, and is a founding partner of Detroit Venture Partners. In 2013 Rock Ventures bought the majority of the Greektown Casino-Hotel in Detroit, which he sold in 2019.
Family and Philanthropy
Gilbert’s eldest son was born with neurofibromatosis and died at 26 in 2023. Gilbert established two research clinics for the condition, at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and at the Dana Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Why It Matters
Gilbert is a leading figure in the revival of downtown Detroit and in American professional basketball, and Rocket’s share price is the basis of his fortune.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Dan Gilbert speaking onstage in September 2014. Photo: Steve Jennings / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
