Gautam Adani, founder and chairman of the Adani Group, is ranked No. 31 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $63.8 billion. A US criminal case against him was dismissed by a federal judge in August 2026.
Gautam Shantilal Adani was born on June 24, 1962, in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, to a Jain family; his father was a small textile merchant and he has seven siblings. He dropped out of school at 16.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 31, with $63.8 billion
- Later estimate: Wikipedia reports $89.6 billion as of June 2026, making him the second richest person in India and 24th in the world
Building the Adani Group
- 1978: moved to Mumbai to work as a diamond sorter for Mahendra Brothers
- 1981: managed his elder brother’s plastics unit in Ahmedabad, which became his entry into global trading through PVC imports
- 1988: established the Adani Group
- 1995: won the contract to run Gujarat’s Mundra Port and set up its first jetty; the port later became India’s largest private port
- 2006–2012: entered power generation, and acquired Abbot Point Port and the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, Australia
- 2020: won a $6 billion solar bid for an 8,000 MW project and took a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport
Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2022.
Controversies and Legal Cases
- Cronyism allegations: Adani has been described as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has led to allegations of cronyism, according to Wikipedia
- Hindenburg Research: in January 2023 the short seller accused his companies of stock manipulation and fraud; in January 2024 India’s Supreme Court resolved the dispute over the allegations and rejected requests for a special investigation team or a CBI inquiry
- US indictment: on November 20, 2024, prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him and other executives, alleging that over $250 million in bribes were to be paid to Indian officials for contracts in several states
The 2026 Outcome in the US
In May 2026 Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani agreed to pay $18 million in a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the US Justice Department moved to dismiss the criminal case. On August 10, 2026, Judge Nicholas Garaufis dismissed the securities-fraud and wire-fraud charges against all three defendants named in them. A decision on the remaining charges against five defendants who had not appeared in court was postponed pending further filings.
Why It Matters
The Adani Group runs ports, airports, power and renewable-energy businesses in India, so its legal fortunes affect Indian infrastructure and markets as well as Adani’s own wealth.
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: The port of Mundra in Gujarat, which the Adani Group operates (file photo, 2011; Gautam Adani is not pictured). Photo: Felix Dance / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
