Jeff Yass is an options trader and investor with an estimated net worth of $77.8 billion.
What is Jeff Yass's net worth in 2026?
Jeff Yass net worth stands at $77.8 billion as of September 28, 2026, according to Forbes. That makes him the richest person in Pennsylvania. He started out betting on horses and playing poker. Today, his trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, is one of the biggest names in options trading. An early bet on a Chinese startup called ByteDance made him one of the 30 richest people on Earth.
Jeff Yass net worth is $77.8 billion as of September 28, 2026, per Forbes. He ranks No. 27 in the world and No. 18 on the Forbes 400. His fortune comes from two sources. One is Susquehanna International Group, the trading firm he cofounded in 1987. The other is his large stake in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Jeffrey S. Yass |
| Born | July 1958 |
| Age | 68 |
| Birthplace | Queens, New York City |
| Residence | Haverford, Pennsylvania |
| Education | Binghamton University (math and economics) |
| Spouse | Janine Yass |
| Children | Four |
| Company | Susquehanna International Group (cofounded 1987) |
| Source of wealth | Trading and investments |
| Jeff Yass net worth | $77.8 billion (Forbes, September 2026) |
| Forbes rank | No. 27 in the world, No. 18 in the U.S. |
| Forbes self made score | 8 out of 10 |
Jeff Yass net worth rests on two big assets and one steady income stream. The exact split is private. Still, public reports show the shape.
| Asset | What Is Known |
|---|---|
| ByteDance stake | Susquehanna owned about 15% of ByteDance in 2024. Yass personally held about 7%. |
| Value of that stake | $15 billion to $21 billion in March 2024, based on different estimates |
| Susquehanna International Group | Cofounder and managing director. His exact share is private. |
| Venture holdings | Hundreds of startups backed through SIG China and other Susquehanna arms |
| Yearly income | Over $1 billion a year in the tax years ProPublica reviewed |
The ByteDance stake is the biggest single piece. Forbes calls it Susquehanna's most valuable holding.
Jeff Yass is an American options trader, investor and political donor. He cofounded Susquehanna International Group, one of the largest trading firms on Wall Street. His firm was also an early backer of ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. Few people outside finance knew his name before 2024. That year, his TikTok stake and political giving made headlines.
Jeffrey Yass was born in July 1958 in Queens, New York. Both of his parents, Gerald and Sybil, were accountants. He also has a sister, Carole. In 1975, he graduated from Bayside High School.
College came next at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York. There he studied math and economics. His roommate was Arthur Dantchik, a friend from Bayside High. Dantchik later became his business partner. Yass started graduate study in economics at New York University but left before he finished.
Numbers drew him to gambling early. He wrote his senior thesis at Binghamton on horse racing. Its title was "An Econometric Analysis of Horse Racing." The magazine Gambling Times published it, according to a detailed Philadelphia Magazine profile.
He put that research to work. Yass and his friends formed a betting group called RAMJAC that covered a large share of the possible winning combinations at racetracks. In 1985, the group lost on 110 of its 140 betting days, yet still came out well ahead. Forbes reports that he and Dantchik also worked as professional gamblers in Las Vegas. "I took a lot of hard knocks," Yass said of those years. "But I learned a lot, and I had a lot of fun, too."
Those skills fit markets well. In 1981, Yass began trading options on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Israel Englander, who later founded Millennium Management, backed him in those early years. That early money was small next to today's Jeff Yass net worth, but it taught him how to price risk.
Three engines built Jeff Yass net worth: a trading firm, one great startup bet and a large venture portfolio.
Yass founded Susquehanna International Group, known as SIG, in 1987 with five college friends. They were Arthur Dantchik, Eric Brooks, Andrew Frost, Steven Bloom and Joel Greenberg. The group named the firm after the Susquehanna River, which flows near Binghamton. Its first home was the options floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.
A few months later came Black Monday, the stock market crash of October 1987. SIG made several million dollars that day. Yass later told the Philadelphia Inquirer there was "no celebration at all" because the day felt "too spooky."
SIG works as a market maker. It stands ready to buy and sell stocks and options all day. Its goal is to earn a tiny gap, called the spread, between buying and selling prices. Across millions of trades, those small gains add up.
Poker still shapes the culture. New traders go through a three month training program in which in house poker games play a central role. According to Forbes, SIG traders have won three World Series of Poker bracelets. Cofounder Eric Brooks even won a World Series of Poker event in 2008.
Today, Susquehanna calls itself a global trading firm that runs on math and data. It has more than 3,500 employees and over 16 offices around the world. Beyond stocks and options, it also runs arms for growth equity, venture capital and prediction markets. Its headquarters sits in Bala Cynwyd, just outside Philadelphia. Susquehanna remains the steady engine behind Jeff Yass net worth.
This is the bet that changed everything. Yass set up SIG China in 2005 to invest in Chinese tech startups. In 2012, SIG put a few million dollars into a young company called ByteDance, founded by Zhang Yiming. Dantchik helped lead that deal.
ByteDance later launched TikTok. In 2018, it merged TikTok with the app Musical.ly. TikTok then became one of the most popular apps in the world. As of 2024 reports, SIG owned about 15% of ByteDance. Yass personally held about 7%, worth roughly $21 billion in March 2024. A stake that began with a few million dollars now makes up a large share of Jeff Yass net worth.
In January 2026, TikTok's U.S. business moved into a new company, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture. Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX each hold 15%, and ByteDance keeps 19.9%. Susquehanna joined through its affiliate, Vastmere Strategic Investments. SIG managing director Mark Dooley also sits on its seven member board.
SIG backs far more than ByteDance. Its China arm has invested in more than 350 companies. Heights Capital Management, formed in 1996, invests in public health care and tech firms. Susquehanna Growth Equity, formed in 2006, backs software companies. These holdings add to Jeff Yass net worth, though their values stay private.
The firm also held a large position in Digital World Acquisition Corp. That company merged with Trump Media, the owner of Truth Social, in March 2024. As a market maker, SIG paired those shares with hedges. So the position reflected trading activity, not a long term bet on the company.
Forbes has tracked his rise closely. Here is how the Jeff Yass net worth figure has changed since 2023.
| Date | Forbes Estimate | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| April 2023 | $28.5 billion | No. 48 in the world |
| October 2023 | $28.9 billion | Richest in Pennsylvania |
| April 2024 | $27.6 billion | Richest in Pennsylvania |
| April 2025 | $59 billion | No. 25 in the world |
| March 2026 | $67.4 billion | No. 28 in the world |
| September 28, 2026 | $77.8 billion | No. 27 in the world |
Between April 2024 and April 2025, the Jeff Yass net worth estimate more than doubled. Most of that jump tracks the rising value of ByteDance, his largest asset. Since then, Jeff Yass net worth has kept climbing, adding almost $19 billion since April 2025.
Different sites show very different numbers for Yass. In March 2024, Forbes put Jeff Yass net worth at $27.6 billion. Around the same time, Bloomberg estimated his fortune at about $40.8 billion.
Private assets explain the gap. ByteDance does not trade on a stock market, so each tracker picks its own value for it. Bloomberg valued his ByteDance stake at about $15 billion in March 2024. Other reports put it closer to $21 billion. Each tracker also estimates his share of Susquehanna in its own way. So a Jeff Yass net worth figure can jump by billions when a tracker revalues ByteDance. Always check the date on any number you see.
Jeff Yass net worth now tops every other trading fortune on the Forbes 400. Here is how he compares with other famous traders, based on Forbes real time figures from September 2026.
| Billionaire | Firm | Forbes Net Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Jeff Yass | Susquehanna International Group | $77.8 billion |
| Ken Griffin | Citadel | $58 billion |
| Israel Englander | Millennium Management | $27.6 billion |
| Arthur Dantchik | Susquehanna International Group | $21.5 billion |
Yass leads Ken Griffin by about $20 billion. Griffin's wealth comes mostly from Citadel itself. Yass, by contrast, also owns a giant private tech stake.
His taxes drew national attention in 2022. A ProPublica investigation looked at six years of his taxes. It estimated he saved more than $1 billion.
The report focused on a trading strategy used by a Susquehanna fund. This fund held stocks and also bet against the wider market. That setup created short term losses, which cancel out income taxed at high rates. It also created long term gains, which face lower rates. ProPublica found his average federal income tax rate was about 19% in those years. Paying less tax meant a larger share of each dollar stayed in Jeff Yass net worth.
A spokesperson for Susquehanna and Yass declined to comment on the report. The IRS had challenged Susquehanna in separate cases, and some of those disputes were still pending when the report came out.
Yass is a registered Libertarian. For many years, he has served as a trustee of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. His giving focuses on low taxes, free markets and, above all, school choice. Politics takes a small slice of Jeff Yass net worth, yet his gifts rank among the largest in the country.
His political donations grew fast over the past decade:
His ties to Donald Trump drew close attention in 2024. The two met briefly at a Club for Growth donor retreat in March 2024. About a week later, Trump said he opposed a TikTok ban. Trump told CNBC the two talked about education, not TikTok.
School choice is the cause closest to his heart. Along with his wife, Janine, he has backed charter schools and school choice programs for years. Yass has long supported the school choice goals of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
He has also given to Save the Children and to the Port Authority fund for families of 9/11 victims.
For a man worth this much, Yass lives a fairly low key life. He and Janine live in Haverford, a Main Line suburb in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. In 2026, local press reported that the couple was backing a project called Gladwyne Square. The plan, with the design firm Haldon House, aims to reshape the village center of nearby Gladwyne.
Golf is one of his known passions. In 2001, he offered a caddie $100,000 if he could make a hole in one. The caddie sank the shot from about 140 yards, and Yass paid him the full amount. "If I had time, I could be one of the best golfers in the world," Yass once said.
We found no public reports of yachts, private jets or trophy homes. Most of Jeff Yass net worth stays tied up in Susquehanna and ByteDance.
Yass and his wife, Janine, have four children. Family also played a part at SIG. His father, Gerald, a certified public accountant, helped build the firm's back office in the 1990s. Gerald Yass died in January 2024 at age 94.
Even with Jeff Yass net worth near $78 billion, he keeps a quiet public life. He rarely gives interviews. His firm seldom talks about his private life.
Three factors will shape his fortune in the years ahead. This outlook is our own analysis, not a forecast from any tracker.
If ByteDance keeps growing, Jeff Yass net worth could keep rising faster than most trading fortunes.
Yass personally owned about 7% of ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, as of 2024 reports. His firm, Susquehanna, held about 15% in total.
Jeff Yass is the richest person in Pennsylvania. Forbes has ranked him first in the state every year since at least 2023.
He is a registered Libertarian. Still, most of his political gifts go to Republicans.
Three things define him: cofounding Susquehanna, an early bet on ByteDance and big gifts to school choice causes.
He made his money through options trading at Susquehanna and his early stake in ByteDance.
Jeff Yass is 68 years old. He was born in July 1958.
Jeff Yass net worth reached $77.8 billion in September 2026. He built it with math, patience and an early ByteDance bet that grew into a stake worth billions. A student who wrote his thesis on horse racing now ranks above every other trading billionaire on the Forbes 400. With ByteDance still growing, his story is far from finished.
Net worth figures come from Forbes and Bloomberg estimates, which rely on public data and private company valuations. Real time figures change daily.
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