Sir Len Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries and owner of most of Warner Music Group, is ranked No. 78 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $29.9 billion. He is a British-American businessman and philanthropist.
Leonard Blavatnik was born on June 14, 1957, in Odessa, then in the Ukrainian SSR, to a Jewish family who later moved to Yaroslavl. He attended the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering but did not finish after his family applied for emigration visas. There he became friends with Viktor Vekselberg, who later founded Renova Group.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 78, with $29.9 billion
- Earlier estimate: in April 2025 Forbes put him at $26.5 billion, 75th in the world, according to Wikipedia
Education and Emigration
His family emigrated to the United States in 1978. He received a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University’s engineering school in 1981 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1989.
Access Industries
- 1986: he founded the holding company Access Industries, based in New York
- Industrial holdings: it controls 21% of LyondellBasell, the world’s largest producer of polypropylene, and owns most of Warner Music Group
- Russian assets: after the Soviet collapse he used Access to buy privatised state assets, particularly shares in aluminium smelters; one investment, Sual, later became part of Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium producer, on whose board he sat from 2007 to 2016
Philanthropy and Politics
- Universities: he has supported Yale, Harvard and Oxford
- Tate Modern: in 2011 he gave more than £50 million, the largest donation in the gallery’s history, and in 2017 its extension was named the Blavatnik Building
- Knighthood: he was knighted in 2017 for services to philanthropy
- Politics: he is one of the largest donors to the Republican Party; in 2015–2016 he gave $7.35 million to six Republican candidates and in February 2016 over $1 million to an anti-Trump Republican group
Why It Matters
Blavatnik’s wealth comes from privatised Russian metals and energy assets and from his later investments in music and chemicals, and he is one of the best-known donors to universities and museums.
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 Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern in London, named after Len Blavatnik (file photo, 2025; he is not pictured). Photo: Ewan-M / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
