Three Comma Club: Meet Arizona’s 12 Billionaires

Photos by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Celebrity Fight Night, AP/Jeff Robbins, Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images

By Jessica Swarner

May 25, 2023

Arizona’s richest resident is a member of the family that started U-Haul. 

A dozen of the world’s 2,640 billionaires are Arizonans. They hold a combined $32.7 billion in wealth, according to the latest Forbes list.

Meanwhile, the median net worth of an American family was $121,760 in 2020, the latest data the Federal Reserve has available.

Get to know Arizona’s 12 billionaires and their net worths as of May 18, with additional information from Forbes: 

  1. Mark Shoen, $4.9 billion

Mark Shoen, 72, is the son of the couple that started truck-rental company U-Haul, which is now headquartered in Phoenix. He owns about one-fifth of U-Haul’s parent company Amerco. 

  1. E. Joe Shoen, $4.2 billion

Joe Shoen, 73, is another heir to the family that started U-Haul. He forced his dad into retirement in 1986 to take over the company, upsetting most of his 12 siblings. He also owns about one-fifth of Amerco and reportedly maintains a good relationship with Mark. 

  1. Arturo Moreno, $4.1 billion

Arturo Moreno, 76, has owned the Los Angeles Angels baseball team since he bought it for $184 million in 2003, becoming the first Mexican American to own a major US sports team. He made his money through his billboard company Outdoor Systems, which he sold in 1999 for $8.7 billion. 

  1. Bob Parsons, $3.4 billion

Bob Parsons, 72, founded web-hosting company GoDaddy, which is headquartered in Tempe. He sold a software firm for $64 million in 1994, three years before he started the company that became GoDaddy. He owns the Scottsdale National Golf Club. 

  1. Bennett Dorrance, $3.1 billion

Bennett Dorrance, 77, is an heir to the family that started Campbell Soup. He is a founding partner of a real-estate development firm that has projects in Arizona dand other states, and he owns a private hangar in Scottsdale. 

  1. Ernest Garcia II, $3 billion

Ernest Garcia II, 66, founded used-car company DriveTime. He is also the biggest shareholder in Carvana, a used-car retailer based in Tempe. Carvana was founded by his son Ernest Garcia III, who was on the Forbes billionaires list last year but dropped off this year. 

  1. Stewart Horejsi, $2.6 billion

Stewart Horejsi, 85, started investing in Berkshire Hathaway in 1980—and it’s now the world’s most expensive stock. He has also invested millions into his own mutual fund. 

  1. George Kurtz, $1.8 billion

George Kurtz, 52, is the CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which went public in 2019. Before CrowdStrike, he started a security tech firm that was acquired by McAfee in 2004. 

  1. Peter Sperling, $1.6 billion

Peter Sperling, 63, is an heir to the family that started Apollo Education Group, which owns and operates the University of Phoenix. Sperling joined the company a decade after his father founded it and stepped down as chairman when it went private in 2017. 

  1. Jerry Moyes, $1.5 billion

Jerry Moyes, 79, founded Swift Transportation with his dad in 1966. Then, the company consisted of one truck that transported goods between Arizona and California. After growing to a fleet of 20,000 trucks, Swift merged with Knight Transportation in 2017. Moyes also owned the Arizona Coyotes until the team filed for bankruptcy in 2009.  

  1. Jahm Najafi, $1.3 billion

Jahm Najafi, 60, is a private equity investor and part owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. His family immigrated to the US from Iran when he was a child. In 2003, his investment firm bought domain registrar Network Solutions for $100 million, and just four years later he sold it for $800 million. 

  1. Ken Kendrick, $1 billion

Ken Kendrick, 79, is the largest shareholder of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. He made his money by founding software development company Datatel and investing in a community bank in Texas that now has $1.7 billion in assets. 

Author

  • Jessica Swarner

    Jessica Swarner is the community editor for The Copper Courier. She is an ASU alumna and previously worked at KTAR News 92.3 FM in Phoenix.

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