Phil Knight and his family are ranked No. 68 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, tied with Michal Strnad, with a net worth of $31.1 billion. Knight co-founded Nike and was its chairman and chief executive.
Philip Hampson Knight was born on February 24, 1938, in Portland, Oregon, to Bill Knight, a lawyer turned newspaper publisher, and Lota Hatfield Knight. He went to Cleveland High School.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 68 (tied with Michal Strnad), with $31.1 billion, listed as “Phil Knight & family”
- Earlier estimate: Forbes put his wealth at $35.4 billion in October 2025, according to Wikipedia
Runner and Student
Knight ran middle distance for the University of Oregon’s track team under coach Bill Bowerman, with a personal best of 4:13 for the mile. He earned a business degree in 1959 in three years, served in the Army Reserve and then attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He worked as a certified public accountant at Coopers & Lybrand and then Price Waterhouse.
Founding Nike
- November 1962: on a trip around the world he stopped in Kobe, Japan, and discovered Tiger running shoes made by Onitsuka, now known as Asics
- Early sales: he sold shoes from a green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest; by 1969 he could leave his accountant job to work full-time for Blue Ribbon Sports
- 1971: the company was renamed Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory, on the suggestion of Jeff Johnson, the first full-time employee; the swoosh logo, commissioned for $35 from the design student Carolyn Davidson, was adopted the same year
- 1977: with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister he founded the running team Athletics West
Film and Philanthropy
Knight owns the stop-motion film studio Laika, which grew out of his purchase of Will Vinton Studios. He has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to each of the University of Oregon, Stanford and Oregon Health & Science University.
Why It Matters
Nike grew from a small shoe distributor into one of the largest sportswear companies in the world, and the Knight family’s shares are the source 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: The Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon (file photo, 2017; Phil Knight is not pictured). Photo: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
