Hiroshi Mikitani Net Worth

Hiroshi Mikitani has an estimated net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires, Hiroshi Mikitani profile (figures as of October 20, 2026). That is down from a peak of $6.7 billion.

Hiroshi Mikitani is a Japanese entrepreneur best known for founding and leading Rakuten. He started in banking at the Industrial Bank of Japan from 1988 to 1996, with time at Harvard Business School from 1991 to 1993. After leaving finance, he set up Crimson Group and moved into internet business. In 1997, he launched an online marketplace that became Rakuten, then took the company public in 2000.

His wealth is tied mainly to online retail and Rakuten’s wider digital business. The company began with 13 shops and 6 employees, then expanded into travel, e-books, credit cards, banking, messaging, and sports. In 2010, Mikitani pushed Rakuten to use English internally as it expanded outside Japan. Forbes put his net worth at $3.1 billion on its real-time billionaires tracker as of October 20, 2026, after years shaped by expansion, big investments, and losses at Rakuten.

How Hiroshi Mikitani built his fortune

Mikitani made his name by building Rakuten into one of Japan’s biggest e-commerce retailers. He founded the company in 1997 and launched Rakuten Ichiba in Japan that same year. The business focused on connecting buyers and sellers through an online marketplace. Rakuten later grew far beyond shopping, adding banking, travel, e-books, credit cards, and other digital services under the same corporate umbrella.

Expansion played a big role in how Rakuten grew. In 2010, Mikitani shifted the company toward overseas deals and made English its official internal language. Rakuten bought or developed businesses such as Buy.com, PriceMinister, Kobo, Ebates, and Viber, while also taking minority stakes in Pinterest and Lyft. By 2017, Rakuten had over 14,000 employees, over 42,000 shops on its e-commerce sites, and over 100 million members in Japan.

What affected the Forbes estimate

Forbes has tracked major swings in Mikitani’s fortune as Rakuten pushed into new areas. Its estimate was $4.8 billion in 2019, rose to $6.7 billion in 2021, then fell to $3.4 billion in 2023. Those years included a costly mobile push, with Rakuten launching a $5.5 billion mobile service in 2020. In 2021, Tencent, Japan Post Holdings, and Walmart invested more than $2 billion in Rakuten.

More recently, Forbes showed Mikitani at $3.9 billion on the 2026 World's Billionaires List and $3.1 billion on its real-time tracker in October 2026. Rakuten also made moves to raise cash. In 2023, it listed Rakuten Bank and sold part of its stake in 2 tranches worth nearly $900 million. Forbes also noted that Rakuten reported a net loss of $1.1 billion for 2025 on revenue of $16.1 billion.