Ever wonder who the richest people in Minnesota are?
We did.
So we set on a mission to find out.
We consulted with Forbes’ most updated Billionaires list, cross-referenced it with our local knowledge, and honed-in specifically on billionaires from Minnesota.
What’s left is this list of the richest people in Minnesota. As a bonus, our list will also highlight the richest man in Minnesota, the richest woman in Minnesota, and the richest families in Minnesota.
Let’s get bean counting!
Contents
- 7. Stanley Hubbard – Net Worth: $1.6 billion
- 6. Mark Davis & Family – Net Worth: $1.9 billion
- 5. Glen Taylor – Net Worth: $2.7 billion
- 4. William “Bill” Austin – Net Worth: $3.3 billion
- 3. Richard Schulze – Net Worth: $3.7 billion
- 2. Pohlad Family – Net Worth: $3.8 billion
- 1. The Cargill Family – Net Worth: $33.4 billion
7. Stanley Hubbard – Net Worth: $1.6 billion
Stanley S. Hubbard is the chairman and CEO of Hubbard Broadcasting, the national TV and Radio corporation headquartered in St. Paul, MN. He also founded United Stated Satellite Broadcasting, which eventually became DirectTV.
Today, Hubbard Broadcasting owns TV and Radio stations spanning from New York to Seattle. Here in the Twin Cities, the company is best known for KSTP ABC Channel 5 Eyewitness News, KS95 Radio, MyTalk 107.1, and SKOR North. They also have a large prescence in Northern Minnesota; they broadcast WDIO ABC News out of Duluth, plus 12+ regional Minnesota radio stations.
Stanley Hubbard inherited the company from his father, Stanley E. Hubbard. From a young age, Stanley worked the family business. He started as a prop person for his father’s company when he was 17, and he studied photojournalism and management while at the University of Minnesota.
6. Mark Davis & Family – Net Worth: $1.9 billion
Mark Davis runs the Davisco cheese supply company, and his siblings run the Minnesota-based quartz countertop company, Cambria.
The Davis’ family fortune began when Mark’s father, Stanley Davis, founded Davisco foods in 1943. Initially, the company sold butter to the United States government during World War II.
Mark Davis began working for his father’s company as a delivery driver in the 1950s and eventually started managing the cheese operations in the 1960s. By the 1970s, Mark noticed an increased demand for mozzarella and cheddar cheese, so he switched the old butter company’s focus to cheese.
Over the next few decades, Davisco became one of Kraft’s largest supplies. In 2014, Davisco sold to Agropur for an undisclosed sum. Mark’s son, Jon, continues to run the billion dollar company.
Today, the family fortune is used by Mark’s siblings to run the privately owned quartz countertop company, Cambria, which is headquartered in Le Sueur, MN. The family also purchased the bankrupt Sun Country airlines in 2011 before selling it for an undisclosed sum in 2017.
5. Glen Taylor – Net Worth: $2.7 billion
Glen Taylor is a well-known billionaire here in Minnesota. He initially made his fortune from Taylor Corporation, a Mankato-based printing and graphics design company that works with large brands ranging from Amazon to McDonalds.
These days, he’s best known as the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team, Minnesota Lynx WNBA team, the United FC MLS soccer team, and the Star Tribune.
Taylor is a self-made millionaire who was born in Springfield, Minnesota and grew up in a farming family in Comfrey, MN. He graduated from Minnesota State University in Mankato before getting his MBA at Harvard.
Throughout college, he worked for a relatively small Mankato print shop called Carlson Wedding Services, which specialized in wedding invitations. When the company’s owner announced his retirement, Taylor offered to pay his boss $2 million over the course of 10 years for the company. He then spent the next several years growing the wedding shop into one of the world’s largest graphics communication companies in the United States. Taylor Corp now has over 10,000 employees in its Mankato headquarters and has worked with major brands including Amazon, McDonalds, Bed Bath & Beyond, Taco Bell, and Google.
In 1994, Taylor purchased the Minnesota Timberwolves for $94 million, and in 1999, he added the Minnesota Lynx to his portfolio. He announced that he had purchased the Star Tribune in 2014. The next year, Major League Soccer announced the new Minnesota United Football Club, whose ownership group included Glen Taylor. (The soccer team’s other owners included investors in the Minnesota Wild and the Minnesota Twins – more on them later in this article!)
In 2021, Taylor announced that he had sold the Minnesota Timberwolves for $1.5 billion.
4. William “Bill” Austin – Net Worth: $3.3 billion
William F. “Bill” Austin is the fourth richest person in Minnesota. He runs Starkey Hearing Technologies in Eden Prairie, MN. Starkey is one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers in the world.
In the 1960s, Bill Austin was attending the University of Minnesota with dreams of becoming a doctor, but he dropped out of school in when he saw an opportunity to improve the era’s poor quality hearing aids. In 1970, he bought the hearing aid parts shop, Starkey Labs, for $13,000, and soon introduced the world’s first custom molded, in-the-ear hearing aid.
The company grew steadily for several years, but sales exploded in the 1980s when the world saw Ronald Reagan photographed wearing one of Austin’s hearing aids.
Today, Bill Austin lives in Brownsville, Texas, but Starkey remains headquartered in Eden Prairie and records nearly a billion dollars per year in hearing aid sales.
3. Richard Schulze – Net Worth: $3.7 billion
Richard Schuzle is the richest independent man in Minnesota. He is the founder and largest shareholder of Best Buy.
Schulze was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended Central High School before enrolling in the United States Air Force and Minnesota Air National Guard.
After his time in the airforce, Schulze began working as an electronics salesman. In 1966, he mortgaged his home and founded a stereo equipment store in St. Paul called Sound of Music. The shop expanded to nine stores around the Twin Cities, and Schulze renamed the chain “Best Buy.” Ever heard of it? š
Today, Best Buy does nearly $50 billion per year in revenue. Schulze remains the largest single shareholder of the publicly traded company, owning approximately 12%.
2. Pohlad Family – Net Worth: $3.8 billion
The Pohlad Family is a group of three brothers who own a wide range of businesses that span banking, commercial real estate, manufacturing, movie production, car dealerships, and most notably, the Minnesota Twins baseball team. They are the second richest family in Minnesota, worth approximately $4 billion.
The family fortune began with Carl Pohlad. After serving in World War II, he returned home, married his wife, and moved to Edina, MN. There, he worked his way up to CEO of Marquette Bank, which he expanded over the years through numerous acquisitions. Along the way, Carl founded PepsiAmericas, which he grew to become the second largest bottler of Pepsi products in the world.
In 1984, Carl Pohlad bought the Minnesota Twins.
Around that time, he began involving his three sons in various family business.
- His son Jim took over primary management responsibilities for the Minnesota Twins.
- His son Bill founded River Road Entertainment, a movie production company that has produced several famous movies including Brokeback Mountain, Into the Wild, 12 Years a Slave, and Food Inc, among others.
- His son Robert took over PepsiAmericas and eventually oversaw the family’s robotics manufacturing company, banking companies, and auto dealerships.
1. The Cargill Family – Net Worth: $33.4 billion
When it comes to the richest people in Minnesota, the answer is The Cargills. And it’s not even close.
The Cargill family is the richest family in Minnesota, and they also boast single richest man in Minnesota as well as the single richest woman in Minnesota.
The Cargill family owns the massive food and agricultural business Cargill, Inc.
How big is Cargill? Well, it’s the largest privately held corporation in the United States, and if it were publicly traded on the stock market, it would be the 15th largest company in Fortune 500. (Ahead of such massive corporations as AT&T, Verizon, Ford, Chevron, and JPMorgan Chase, just to name a few…)
And the Cargill family owns 90% of the company by themselves.
That’s because the Minnetonka-headquartered company was founded by William Wallace Cargill in 1865. When he died in 1909, the company was divided equally among his four children. Since then, the family has continued to hold the company and pass it down from generation to generation.
According to Forbes, the Cargill family includes the following billionaires:
- Pauline MacMillan Keinath – Net Worth: $6.9 billion (The Richest Woman in Minnesota)
- Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer – Net Worth: $4.3 billion
- Austeen Cargill, II – Net Worth: $3.9 billion (Tied for the Richest Man in Minnesota)
- James Cargill, II – Net Worth: $3.9 billion (Tied for the Richest Man in Minnesota)
- Marianne Liebmann – Net Worth: $3.9 billion
- Sarah McMillan – Net Worth: $1.9 billion
- Alexandra Daitch – Net Worth: $1.9 billion
- Lucy Stitzer – Net Worth: $1.9 billion
- Cargill MacMillan, III – Net Worth: $1.2 billion
- John MacMillan – Net Worth: $1.2 billion
- Martha MacMillan – Net Worth: $1.2 billion
- William MacMillan – Net Worth: $1.2 billion
The result? A fortune nearly ten times as large as the next closest in Minnesota.
Interested in more Minnesota celebrity trivia? Don’t miss these articles!
