Edited By Alex Knapp and Michael Noer, Forbes Staff

From the Empire State Building to the hundreds of data centers popping up across the country, building is at the heart of the American Dream. Visionary architects, developers and construction tycoons have shaped the physical landscape, but equally important are the investors and entrepreneurs who have revolutionized everything from our financial systems to our energy infrastructure. In honor of the nation’s 250th birthday, Forbes is recognizing America’s 250 greatest builders.

AMERICA’S GREATEST BUILDERS

He built Amazon into the world’s biggest company by revenue ($717 billion in 2025) via two infrastructure plays: first, as a supply chain and logistics network that enables fast delivery around the globe and second, via Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing service that controls nearly 30% of the market. His space company Blue Origin is working on lunar landers and a Martian telecommunications network for NASA, part of his grander vision to relocate most of Earth’s heavy industry into space.

Tesla accelerated the electric vehicle market by selling over 9 million battery-powered cars and trucks. Now Musk’s automaker is pivoting to humanoid robots and self-driving taxis. Up next: he’s looking to build AI data centers in orbit via his rocket company SpaceX, which recently committed at least $100 billion to building a spaceport in Louisiana.

#3. Warren Buffett, 96

He turned Berkshire Hathaway from a small manufacturing company bought in 1965 into a sprawling conglomerate. Along the way he delivered compounding returns at nearly twice the rate of the S&P and inspired countless others to build long-lasting wealth through his buy-and-hold teachings. Among Berkshire’s holdings today are natural gas pipelines and electric utilities serving 13 million customers and a railroad with roughly 1,300 trains transporting goods all over the country every day.

#4. Charles Schwab, 89

His namesake brokerage, which he founded in 1971, averages nearly 10 million trades per day. One key innovation that helped it snag more than 40 million client accounts worth around $13 trillion: cutting commissions to half what other brokers charged.

Home Depot, the hardware retail giant he cofounded, has helped millions of Americans build and upgrade their homes. The $165 billion (revenue) chain, which has some 475,000 employees at 2,300 locations, claims to have generated $35 billion in GDP.

He co-founded chipmaker Nvidia in 1993. Now the world’s valuable company, worth more than $5 trillion, its hardware has fueled advances in both graphics and artificial intelligence and is now partnering with utility and infrastructure firms such as NextEra Energy, Cloverleaf Infrastructure and SB Energy to help build both massive data centers and the electric grid needed to power them.

Related Companies, Ross' real estate firm, has developed or acquired more than $60 billion worth of properties around the globe. Known for developments like Hudson Yards, Related now has $45 billion of data centers in the works including the $16 billion “Barn” that it’s building exclusively for Oracle and its customer Open AI.

#8. Judy Faulkner, 83

Epic Systems, which she founded in a Wisconsin basement in 1979, is now the engine behind a massive amount of the nation’s health care records. More than one-third of hospitals use its MyChart platform, and more than 190 million patients have their own MyChart. A quarter of a million of these patients used it to sign up to be organ donors in the 12 months through May of this year. In September, the company struck a deal with OpenAI to integrate its data into ChatGPT for Healthcare.

BlackRock, which he started as a bond-investing and risk-management unit within Blackstone, now manages $15 trillion in assets, investing largely in public stocks, bonds and ETFs on behalf of tens of millions of customers including more than 190,000 financial advisors in the U.S. It says it helps more than 35 million Americans save for retirement. “At its best, long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle,” stated Fink in his 2026 annual letter, responding to what he described as “anxiety” around capitalism.

He co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and served as its CEO for its first 25 years, helping to kick off the information revolution and making Windows the default operating system for over a billion personal computer users.

#11. Stephen Schwarzman, 79

Today, Blackstone, the private equity firm that Schwarzman co-founded in 1985, is the world’s largest alternative asset manager with over $1.3 trillion under management. Among its most recent commitments: more than $25 billion to invest in data centers and power generation in Pennsylvania.

#12. Daniel Gilbert, 64

Rocket Mortgage, previously known as Quicken Loans, which Gilbert cofounded, has closed more than $1.8 trillion in home loans and services more than 2.5 million families’ mortgages every month. It is the biggest mortgage lender in the U.S. by number originated and No. 2 by value of mortgages.

#13. Thomas Peterffy, 81

In 1993, the digital trading pioneer created Interactive Brokers, an electronic trading platform initially geared towards professional traders. In recent years, it’s shifted its strategy to serve more retail investors, resulting in a quintupling of the accounts it manages from around 1 million in 2020 to over 5.1 million. It now manages over $900 billion in client equity.

A trailblazer of large-scale master-planned communities, Bren’s impact on suburbia and how millions live extends far beyond his own properties, which include nearly 600 office buildings (including New York City’s MetLife building) and 125 apartment complexes.

#15. Philip Anschutz, 86

Over five decades, Anschutz has built fortunes in oil, railroads, telecom and real estate. AEG, which he founded in 1994, entertains over 100 million people a year at 100 venues (Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena, O2 in London) and some 30 music festivals (Coachella, New Orleans Jazz Fest).

#16. Diane Hendricks, 79

ABC Supply, which she and her husband Ken (d. 2007) cofounded 44 years ago, is a key supplier to home builders and contractors, selling over $20 billion worth of drywall, tile, gutters, windows and roofing each year from over 1,000 locations.

A key figure in securing America’s oil independence, Hamm kicked off the fracking revolution in North Dakota’s Bakken region during the 1990s, transforming the industry and helping the U.S. become a net energy exporter.

#18. Larry Ellison, 82

Oracle, which he cofounded in 1977, is now a more than $450 billion (market cap) company that creates the data and cloud infrastructure for more than 200,000 enterprise and government customers.

#19. Charles Koch, 90

At age 90, he still chairs the nation’s second biggest private company by sales, Koch, Inc., which brings in around $125 billion in annual revenue from pipelines, chemicals, auto parts, Dixie cups and more. That’s up from $250 million (around $2.5 billion in today’s dollars) in 1967 when he took over from his dad.

Nicknamed the Cable Cowboy for his brash media deals and complicated corporate structures, Malone built TCI into the nation’s largest cable company and then sold it to AT&T in 1999 for more than $50 billion, delivering astronomical returns to its longtime shareholders. He is known for popularizing the financial metric EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in the cable industry.

#21. Howard Schultz, 73

From a commodity to a cultural phenomenon: Schultz changed the way the world enjoys their coffee via his more than 41,000 global Starbucks shops. The son of a truck driver who lost his job after being injured, he was also a leader in progressive employee benefits offering comprehensive healthcare coverage to part-time workers long before it was common practice and introducing equity and stock options called “bean stock”to full-and part-time baristas. Another jolt: delivering an over 37,000% return to shareholders between Starbucks’ 1992 IPO and the time he left the c-suite in 2023.

#22. Reed Hastings, 65

The Netflix cofounder revolutionized how the world is entertained by pivoting his profitable DVD-by-mail service to streaming content in 2007 and killing off physical media entirely in 2023. Today more than four out of five people around the world use streaming services including 325 million who subscribe to Netflix. And those who believed in him have been rewarded with a more than 70,000% return on their investment.

#23. Dennis Washington, 92

An early – and lasting — love of machinery underlies the entirety of Washington’s career, from operating a crane in Alaska after high school to constructing an industrial conglomerate that includes a copper mining outfit, a freight railroad, a heavy equipment provider and a marine transportation firm.

#24. Marc Andreessen, 55

Andreessen modernized the internet browser with Netscape, which kicked off the Web 1.0 bubble with its 1995 IPO before it was sold to AOL in 1998 for $4.2 billion. He later co-founded VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, which now has over $100 billion in assets and has backed dozens of transformative firms like Airbnb, Coinbase and now OpenAI.

His construction firm Clayco has been building data centers for decades.

#26. Henry Samueli, 71

The co-founder of $1.7 trillion (market cap) semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom holds over 75 patents.

After selling his first company, virtual reality headset maker Oculus, to Meta for $2 billion in 2014, Luckey founded military drone maker Andruil in 2017, which now has a $61 billion valuation.

#28. Jack Dangermond, 81

In 1969, Dangermond founded ESRI, which pioneered software integrating crucial geographic data that underlies economic decisions made by governments and businesses. This includes optimizing site selection, spatial routing to make delivery and supply chain networks more efficient, and enabling better risk management of natural disasters.

The Google co-founder championed its moonshot program, which led to companies like robotaxi firm Waymo and healthtech company Verily.

Brin not only co-founded Google, he has donated over $2 billion to research Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders.

#31. Rupert Murdoch, 95

The media mogul (net worth: $25 billion) founded News Corp in 1980, which today controls media entities around the world including major U.S. outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Fox News.

#32. Satya Nadella, 59

After becoming Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, Nadella guided the $3.6 trillion (market cap) company through its cloud transformation and into the AI era.

Phil Knight cofounded Nike in 1964, which has since grown into the dominant force in athletic apparel with $46 billion in annual sales.

#34. Martine Rothblatt, 71

Rothblatt co-founded Sirius Satellite Radio in 1990 and then in 1996 founded $21 billion (market cap) pharma company United Therapeutics, which is currently developing genetically engineering pig organs (hearts, kidneys) for transplant into people.

#35. John Menard Jr., 86

Menard founded his namesake home improvement retailer in 1960, which today brings in $13 billion in annual sales from 340 stores.

#36. Abigail Johnson, 64

Johnson has served as CEO of Fidelity Investments since 2014, and the firm now manages assets totaling over $7 trillion in assets, up from $2 trillion, thanks to her moves like moving beyond its traditional open-end mutual funds into cryptocurrencies and ETFs and introducing zero-fee index funds to attract retail investors.

Yass co-founded pioneering quant shop Susquehanna International Group in 1987 and has expanded into everything from prediction markets to venture capital.

#38. Mark Zuckerberg, 42

Zuck launched Facebook, now Meta, in 2004, which booked more than $200 billion in revenue last year (most of it from ads) and serves as the de facto website for many small, local businesses.

#39. Michael Dell, 61

It’s not just PCs: A significant amount of the Dell Technology founder's $272 billion fortune comes from his private investment firm DFO management, which has significant holdings in real estate, restaurant chains and technology.

#40. Kamal Ghaffarian

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When Su became chipmaker AMD's CEO in 2014, the company was saddled with debt and trading at around $4 a share; she's since septupled its revenue and its stock is over $500.

#42. Henry Kravis, 82

Kravis co-founded leveraged buyout pioneer KKR in 1976 with George Roberts and Jerome Kohlberg, which is famous for using high debt and junk bonds to acquire and restructure companies as in its $25 billion purchase of RJR Nabisco in 1988.

#43. George Roberts, 82

KKR, the private equity giant ($706 billion AUM asssets ) he co-founded has more than 250 companies in its portfolio including Avantus, which is building solar and battery installations across the Southwest; and Helix Digital Infrastructure, which is backing AI data centers and power-grid deals

#44. Stanley Kroenke, 79

Kroenke has built his $27.6 billion fortune with more than 60 million square feet of real estate and ownership of teams like the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, the NBA's Denver Nuggets and the Arsenal soccer club. Earlier this year he agreed to purchase controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels for $4 billion, and if approved it will represent the biggest sale of a Major League Baseball team.

Thiel's venture firm Founders Fund (2005) has backed major manufacturing and hardware players like SpaceX, defense tech startup Andruil and orbital........

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