Phil Knight Net Worth 2024: The Man Behind the $45 Billion Nike Empire

Phil Knight, one of the world’s most famous businesspeople is the chairman emeritus and co-founder of Nike, Inc., the world’s largest sports apparel and equipment brand by a large margin.

As of 2024, Phil Knight, Nike founder net worth is estimated at $45 billion, making him one of the richest people in America.

However, the American billionaire didn’t source his entire wealth from his profits or stake in his running shoes brand, Nike.

He also owns Laika, a successful stop-motion film production company, and has made some highly profitable investments over the years.

To learn how he built a multi-billion dollar fortune with a good idea and smart business decisions, keep reading.

Phil Knight’s Net Worth: Full Breakdown

While some of Phil Knight’s income, equity, and investments is public knowledge, a lot of it isn’t, which makes tracking down the exact contributions to his net worth next to impossible.

Phil Knight is also quite a private person, making it even more difficult to determine his exact earnings – or stake from different ventures, or the details of what he has invested in over the years.

However, after thorough research, we found enough information on the co-founder of Nike to build a strong estimate of his net worth.

5 Quick Facts About Phil Knight

1. Knight co-founded Nike in 1964, which has grown into a multibillion-dollar brand.
2. His stake in Nike is worth approximately $13.9 billion.
3. Knight owns Laika, a successful stop-motion animation studio.
4. He has donated over $1 billion to the University of Oregon.
5. Knight’s real estate investments include properties in Oregon and a private jet hangar.

Latest News & Controversies 

Political Donations Stir Debate: Phil Knight has once again been in the spotlight due to his substantial political contributions. In February 2024, he quietly donated $2 million to the Bring Balance to Salem PAC, a political action committee aimed at electing Republicans to the Oregon Legislature. This donation has sparked criticism, as some view his contributions as an attempt to sway political power in Oregon. Knight’s political donations have accumulated to $7 million since 2021, making him a significant player in Oregon politics. This has raised concerns, especially since Oregon lawmakers are debating campaign finance limits, which would significantly restrict such contributions by 2027.

Nike’s Ongoing Ties with China: Nike, co-founded by Knight, continues to face scrutiny for its business operations in China. Critics have raised concerns about labor conditions and the company’s supply chain. Despite these issues, Nike remains the largest sports brand in the country, largely attributed to Knight’s early investments and long-standing efforts to establish Nike’s presence in China. This has led to ongoing debates about ethical practices versus business success.

The Early Life of a Sportswear Mogul

Philip Hampson Knight was born on February 24, 1938, in Portland, Oregon.

His father, Bill Knight was a lawyer turned newspaper publisher, and his mother, Lota Cloy Knight, was a housewife and a member of All Saints Episcopal Church.

The family raised their son Phil in East Moreland, where he attended Cleveland High School. While in high school, young Knight wanted to work a summer job at his father’s newspaper, the now-defunct Oregon Journal, but his father refused his request.

The story goes that Knight’s father wouldn’t take him on and wanted him to stand on his own two feet.

He ended up at the rival paper, the Oregonian, where he tabulated the sports scores on the morning shift and ran home seven miles each day.

After his high school graduation, Phil Knight enrolled in the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he worked as a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald and was part of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.

At the time, Knight ran for the Oregon track and field program under coach Bill Bowerman, the man with whom he would later co-found his multibillion-dollar brand, Nike.

In only three years, Knight earned his business degree.

As a middle-distance runner at Oregon, young Knight’s personal best was 1.6km in 4 minutes, 13 seconds. His track performances in 1957, 1958, and 1959 won him varsity letters, too.

Following his graduation from the University of Oregon, Phil Knight enlisted in the United States Army where he served one year of active duty, followed by seven years in the Army Reserve.

In 1959, he received an Army Reserve Commission and was titled a Distinguished Military Graduate.

When his active duty ended, Knight enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business where he obtained his Master’s degree in Business Administration in 1962.

At Stanford University, Knight produced a paper for his business class called Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?

The paper demonstrates his early interest in the sports shoe business.

Phil Knight Net Worth: Running Towards a Global Sports Brand Icon

Phil Knight’s life is impressive at the very least, and his story in the business world started as soon as he obtained his degree. Let’s see how he built that impressive net worth of $45 billion.

The Nike Brand

Naturally, the majority of Phil Knight’s net worth comes from his stake and profits in Nike. Here’s how it all began:

The Founding of Blue Ribbon Sports

When Knight graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, he embarked on a graduation trip. One of the stops on his trips was in Kobe, Japan, where he came across Tiger running shoes, manufactured by Onitsuka.

Impressed by the quality of the shoes, as well as their affordable cost, he reached out to Mr. Onitsuka to set up the meeting. This meeting resulted in Knight getting the distribution rights for the Tiger shoes in the western United States.

He explained the event that would change his life forever in an interview with Indigo.

It took him over a year to get the first Tiger samples shipped to the US. While waiting, Knight worked as a certified public accountant with Cooper & Lybrand and later with Price Waterhouse.

He was also an accounting professor at Portland State University.

When he was working at Portland State University, Knight met his wife Penelope Parks. The couple married in 1968 and had two sons, one of whom died tragically young in a scuba diving accident in El Salvador in 2004. The other son, Travis Knight, runs his father’s animation studio, Laika.

When he finally received the Japanese shoes, he sent the samples to his former track coach Bill Bowerman. Bowerman eventually placed an order for the shoes, but he also made a proposition to Knight to become his business partner.

In January 1964, Knight and Bill Bowerman co-founded Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) to sell Japanese sports shoes in the US.

It’s not exactly common knowledge, but Blue Ribbon Sports would eventually turn into the world-famous Nike brand.

After the founding of the company, Knight started selling Tiger shoes out of his car at various track meets across the Pacific Northwest.

Five years after the founding of Blue Ribbon Sports he was already earning enough to quit his accountant post and work for the company full-time.

The Birth of Nike

Due to friction with Onitsuka over distribution rights, not to mention problems like slow shipments, Knight was forced to rebrand.

In 1971, Blue Ribbon Sports transitioned to become Nike.

The first employee of Blue Ribbon Sports, Jeff Johnson, suggested the name, and the co-founders liked the idea. Nike refers to the Greek goddess of victory.

Not long after, Knight introduced the swoosh logo commissioned for only $35 from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson, and started endorsing athletes, which played a major role in establishing the brand.

In 1983, the brand gave Davidson an undisclosed amount of Nike stock for her contribution, which is reportedly 500 shares as Knight shared on Oprah in 2011.

This would now be worth around $1 million, provided that she didn’t sell the stock.

In 1964, Nike made its first notable endorsement deal with the basketball player Michael Jordan, which led to the famous Air Jordan line creation.

Fast forward to 1977, and Knight founded Athletics West, an American running team with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister.

The Growth of Nike

Under Knight’s leadership, Nike became a global behemoth and started dominating the sportswear market. He turned it into one of the most famous brands of all time and expanded its portfolio to much more than running shoes.

Since the beginning, Knight worked as the CEO of Nike, but he stepped down as CEO in 2004. Even so, he stayed on with the company as a chairman of its board until 2016.

In June 2015, he announced that he was stepping down, and he officially retired from the Nike board in June 2016.

The most likely reason why Phil Knight stepped down as the Nike CEO in 2004 was his son’s death. Matthew Knight, aged 34 years, traveled to El Salvador for a fund-raising video for Christian Children of the World, a nonprofit.

He died while scuba diving with his colleagues, reportedly from a heart attack due to an undetected congenital heart defect.

Knight resigned a few months after the funeral. His replacement was the former CEO of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., William Perez. Two years later, Perez was replaced by Mark Parker.

Read More: The Complete History of Nike

Phil Knight’s Stake in Nike

Directly, as well as through trusts, Philip Knight and his family own around 300 million shares of the Nike brand. The majority of their holdings are controlled by the family’s trust, Swoosh.

In addition to this, Phil Knight personally owns 30 million shares on his own, while his son Travis Knight owns around 41 million shares.

Reportedly, Knight’s portfolio of Nike Stock is worth around $13.9 billion, which doesn’t even cover his stock through his limited liability company Swoosh.

Will Vinton Studios Animation Company: Laika

By the late 1990s, Phil Knight was already a very rich man thanks to the success of the Nike brand.

So, when Will Vinton Studios, the animation company, started searching for external investors due to its rapid growth, Knight jumped at the opportunity to acquire a stake in the company.

In 1998, Knight bought a 15% stake in Vinton Studios. His son Travis, who just graduated from Portland State University worked at the studio as an animator.

Eventually, Knight bought the company in its entirety and assumed control of the company’s board with the cooperation of several Nike executives.

In 2003, Knight appointed his son Travis Knight to the board, paid Vinton a severance package to leave the company, and rebranded it Laika.

After this move, Philip Knight decided to invest $180 million into Laika before the release of the studio’s first feature film, Coraline, in 2009.

Coraline, the stop motion film was a smash hit and a major financial success, following Travis Knight’s promotion into the role of CEO and president of Laika.

With a budget of $60 million, it grossed $124.6 million and got nominated for an Academy Award.

Laika’s team followed this success with their ParaNorman film in 2012, which grossed $107.2 million on a budget of $60 million. The Moongirl film was dedicated to Matthew Knight, Phil’s deceased son.

Five of the company’s movies have been nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Animated Feature:

• Coraline in 2009
• ParaNorman in 2012
• The Boxtrolls in 2014
• Two Strings in 2016
• Missing Link in 2019

In 2016, the studio was rewarded a Scientific and Technology Oscar for its innovation and is currently working on the sixth animated film, Wildwood, based on the book series by Colin Meloy.

The company is valued at $192 to $288 million today.

However, the how much of this belongs to the Knight family isn’t publicly disclosed, though it is still believed that they own the majority of the stock of Laika.

Phil Knight’s Memoir “Shoe Dog”

On April 26, 2016, Simon & Schuster released Philip Hampson Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog. The book reached the fifth spot in The New York Times bestseller list for business books in July 2018.

It shares details of the founding of the Nike brand, as well as the co-founder’s story.

However, this wasn’t his first book. 2008 he wrote Fifty Ways to Stuff the Planet, followed by One Tin Soldier in 2009.

Awards and Accolades

In 1989, Phil Knight was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement for his contributions to business and philanthropy.

In 2012, Knight was announced as the inductee of the Naismith Memorial Basketball of Fame as one of the contributors. He was formally inducted on September 7, 2012.

In 2000, Phil Knight was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for his contribution to sports in Oregon. At that point, he had donated $230 million to UO, most of which went to athletics.

Philanthropic Endeavors

Phil Knight is not only known for founding the major running shoes brand Nike. He is also a famous philanthropist, having donated millions to different causes and won several awards for his actions.

In 1990, Knight founded the Philip H. Knight Charitable Foundation Trust.

Fast forward to 2016, and the Portland Business Journal ranked him as the most generous philanthropist in the history of Oregon, having donated around $2 billion.

He has donated over one billion dollars to the University of Oregon, starting from his first contribution in the late 1980s.

Some of his biggest donations include:

• Donation of $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in 2006. The campus was named The Knight Management Center in honor of his philanthropic service.
• Donation of $100 million to fund the UO Athletic Legacy Fund for athletic programs at the University of Oregon in 2007.
• Partnering with Pat Kilkenny to construct the University of Oregon basketball team’s Matthew Knight Arena, named after his deceased son.
• Pledge of $100 million with his wife Penny to the OHSU Cancer Institute in 2008, which was the largest gift in the history of the Oregon Health & Science University.
• Financing the $68 million gridiron football facility at the University of Oregon in 2013. His locker in the locker room displays the title “Uncle Phil”.
• Donated $19.2 million for a new sports complex project at the University of Oregon with his wife in 2015.
• Donation of $400 million to start a graduate-level education program called Knight-Hennessy Scholars in 2016, inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship.
• An unknown portion of a $270 million donation for the renovation of Hayward Field at the University of Oregon in 2021.
• Donation of $75 million to Stanford University to establish the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience in 2022.

What Else Has Phil Knight Invested In?

Nike and Laika are the two biggest accomplishments of Knight, but they aren’t the only things he has invested in over the years. Phil Knight is known as a major investor with a diversified portfolio.

Let’s take a look at what the billionaire founder of Nike has in his list of assets.

Startups and Stocks

The most prominent stock in Knight’s asset portfolio is, of course, Nike. As the co-founder of Nike, he has remained a significant stakeholder, and as Nike’s success has soared over the years, this has turned him into a multibillionaire.

The Knight family controls Nike by owning trusts and a company called Swoosh, which owns the logo of the company. If we combine their shares, Swoosh LLC, and the trusts, the Knight family controls 97.1% of Class A stocks and 21.4% of Class B stocks at Nike.

This makes them the ultimate decision-makers in the Nike dynasty.

Real Estate

Over the years, Knight has demonstrated a sharp eye for real estate investments.

One of his most notable investments was the purchase of a plot in Madison Club, La Quinta’s exclusive location. He bought the plot for $2.5 million but reportedly sold it not long ago. He also had a property in the same area which he sold for $1.5 million.

While we don’t know if these are still in his portfolio, Knight purchased a stunning property in Hillsboro, Oregon for $2.1 million.

In 2014, Knight spent $7.6 million to build his jet hangar near Oregon. The hangar stores the private jets of the family and is spread across 29,000 square feet. It sits adjacent to the Nike hangar, built in 2002.

Cars and Jets

Knight is a fan of luxury cars, owning some expensive pieces in his asset portfolio. His most prized possession is an Audi R8 worth around $120,000.

His vehicle collection extends to the skies too, with a Gulfstream 650 private jet worth $65 million, not to mention a hangar to keep it in.

His personal hangar houses three private jets, but two of them are owned by Nike.

What Can We Learn From Phil Knight’s Story?

From working at the Oregon Daily Emerald to his foray into selling running shoes, Knight transitioned into one of the most valued names in the sportswear industry and the business world in general.

His story is truly remarkable and has many lessons to teach us.

Knight’s journey with Nike started with a bold idea and determination – nothing more. He found an opportunity and immediately went for it, demonstrating how important it is to believe in yourself and be courageous enough to follow your dreams.

His success started from the point where he made a deal to import Japanese shoes.

Ever since, Nike has been a pioneer in athletic shoes, innovation, and branding. Phil Knight understood the importance of creating a strong brand identity and investing in innovative technologies and design, an approach that helped his brand stand out in a highly competitive market.

Over the years, Knight has frequently emphasized the importance of product quality.

Nike’s commitment to producing high-quality products has contributed to the brand’s reputation for excellence. This teaches us that, in business, it is important to focus on quality over quantity.

In addition to his business success, Phil Knight has been strongly involved in philanthropy.

He and his wife have significantly contributed to various causes, underscoring the importance of corporate social responsibility.

Last but not least, Knight surrounded himself with a talented team of people who shared his vision.