Walton Family Gets $100 Billion Richer As Walmart Surges
Among the world's wealthiest people, they are the only ones who never founded or ran a company, yet their fortunes are climbing while tech titans slide. What explains the Waltons' remarkable 2026 run?
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One could say the Walton family does not deserve to be rich. Among the world’s wealthiest people, they are the only ones who did not start or serve as senior management of a company, most of which are in the tech industry. Nevertheless, five of Walmart (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction) founder Sam Walton’s children and grandchildren have watched their combined net worth rise by $100 billion so far in 2026, Bloomberg reports. That is about the amount Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) founder Larry Ellison has lost in the same period.
Sam Walton started Walmart in 1942, at the age of 44. According to the Fortune 500, it was America’s largest company for several years, until it yielded that position to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) last year.
Walmart remains a juggernaut. It employs 2.1 million people (“associates” as the company calls them). In the US, the figure is 1.6 million. Its footprint in its home market is 4,600 Walmart stores and 600 Sam’s Club locations. Ninety percent of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Sam’s Club or Walmart location.
In the most recent quarter, Walmart revenue rose 5.9% to $187.9 billion. Operating income rose 2.9% to $9.4 billion. John Furner, Walmart’s President and CEO, said, “Our team delivered another good quarter, and we continue to make steady progress on the long-term value drivers of our business. Our multi-year growth in eCommerce is evidence that customers are choosing Walmart because we deliver price, speed, and convenience
across a broad assortment. At Walmart, they can have it all.”
So far this year, Walmart’s stock is up just under 13% while the S&P 500 is up slightly less than that. The company, obviously, has not been hit by the recent AI sell-off. Walmart’s market cap is $1.01 trillion.
Sam’s three children—Alice, Jim, and Rob—each have a net worth of about $155 billion, and each has gained about $28 billion this year. Grandson Lukas has a net worth of $54 billion, which is up about $10 billion. Christy Walton, wife of Sam’s deceased son John, has a net worth of $25 billion, which is up slightly more than $5 billion.
The Waltons are a family that proves that some of the world’s very rich people are just lucky.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
