St. Louis businessman David Steward is Missouri’s richest person, with Forbes estimating his fortune at $12.3 billion and ranking him No. 110 on its newly released list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.
That puts Steward behind Kansas City’s richest person, Overland Park-based Peter Mallouk, CEO of Creative Planning, who ranks No. 70 with $16.5 billion. But both trail Kansas’ richest resident, Wichita’s Charles Koch, who ranks No. 19 with an estimated $76.9 billion fortune.
Steward’s rise is particularly notable.
Born in Chicago and raised in Clinton, Missouri, Steward was one of eight children growing up during segregation. His father worked as a mechanic, janitor and trash collector. After graduating from Central Missouri State University, Steward worked in sales before going into business for himself.
In 1990, he co-founded St. Louis-based World Wide Technology. The early years were difficult: Steward sometimes went without a paycheck, and his car was once repossessed from the company parking lot. Today, he is majority owner of WWT, a global technology company with roughly $20 billion in annual revenue.
Government business helped fuel WWT’s growth. The company qualified for federal minority-business contracting programs and became a major public-sector technology supplier. In Missouri alone, WWT was paid about $53 million by the state during a two-year period reported in 2025. A former state employee later alleged WWT received unfair advantages in some bidding; both WWT and the state denied wrongdoing.
So Who Is the Richest Black Man?
That depends somewhat on how the question is defined.
Forbes ranks Palantir CEO Alexander Karp No. 63, with an estimated $18.8 billion fortune. Karp’s mother is Black and his father is Jewish, and Forbes counts him among America’s Black billionaires.
Karp, however, describes his racial identity less definitively.
“Some Black people think I’m Black, some don’t,” he told The New York Times. “I view me as me.” He has also argued that economic class is more consequential than race, placing greater emphasis on the disadvantages of growing up poor.
That leaves Steward with an unusual distinction: among American billionaires who publicly identify as Black, he is the wealthiest, according to the St. Louis American.
The group at this level remains remarkably small. Private-equity investor Robert F. Smith ranks No. 142, with $10.9 billion, while basketball legend and businessman Michael Jordan ranks No. 367, with $4.7 billion.
This year, it takes at least $4.4 billion just to make the Forbes 400.
Who Tops the 2026 Forbes 400?
- Elon Musk — No. 1, $908 billion: Tesla, SpaceX and other technology ventures.
- Jeff Bezos — No. 2, $378 billion: Amazon and investments, including Blue Origin.
- Larry Page — No. 3, $278 billion: Co-founder of Google.
- Michael Dell — No. 4, $263 billion: Dell Technologies and investments.
- Sergey Brin — No. 5, $256 billion: Co-founder of Google.
Forbes says the 400 richest Americans are collectively worth a record $8 trillion.
