| Walton | |
| Coat Of Arms Size: | 100px |
| Type: | Business |
| Etymology: | Walton (surname); for "a place with the suffix tun ('town, farm, hamlet') and one of the prefixes wald ('a wood'), walesc ('foreigner') or walh ('farm worker')" |
| Founder: | Sam Walton (1918–1992) |
| Titles: | Founder of Walmart, richest family in the United States |
| Estate: | $US 324.3 billion (2024) |
The Walton family is an American family whose collective fortune derived from Walmart makes them the richest family in the United States.[1] [2] [3]
The three most prominent living members (Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton) have consistently been in the top twenty of the Forbes 400 list since 2001, as were John (2005) and Helen (d. 2007) prior to their deaths. Christy Walton took her husband John's place in the ranking after his death. The majority of the family's wealth derives from the heritage of Bud and Sam Walton, who were the co-founders of Walmart. Walmart is the world's largest retailer, one of the world's largest business enterprises in terms of annual revenue, and, with just over 2.2 million employees, the world's largest private employer.
, the Waltons collectively owned 50.8 percent of Walmart.[4] In 2018, the family sold some of their company's stock and now owns just under 50%.[5] In August 2024, the Walton family's net worth was around US$ 324.2 billion.
In 1987, Sam Walton endowed a charitable foundation. The Walton Family Foundation primarily focused on charter schools, but it later extended its program to include environmental issues, particularly water-related.[6]
In 2016, Alice and Jim Walton put a $250 million grant towards building charter school facilities. The Walton Family Foundation created the Building Equity Initiative to provide charter schools with access to capital to create and expand their facilities.[7] This initiative was established after the foundation announced in 2016 that it would spend $1 billion over the next five years to expand "educational opportunity" by partnering with charter school operators, researchers, and education reformers.[8]
The Walton family fortune is broken down as such:
Their immediate family includes Jim, Christy, and Lukas Walton.