Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and television personality. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and co-owner of 2929 Entertainment. From 2012 to 2025, he was one of the "sharks" on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in the suburb of Mt. Lebanon, Cuban was involved in ventures from a young age, from selling garbage bags to later running newspapers during a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette worker's strike. He graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University Bloomington and embarked on a diverse business career that included founding MicroSolutions and Broadcast.com, both of which he sold at substantial profits, the latter being sold to Yahoo! Inc., making Cuban a billionaire. In 2002, the service was discontinued.

Cuban's investments span various industries, from technology and media to sports and entertainment. He has been a prominent figure in the NBA, known for his involvement with the Mavericks (including their 2011 NBA championship) and disputes with the league's management. In his side ventures, Cuban has been involved in philanthropy, political commentary, and reality television.

As of January 2026, Forbes has estimated his net worth to be US$6 billion.

Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 31, 1958. His father, Norton Cuban, was an automobile upholsterer. He described his mother, Shirley (née Feldman), as someone with "a different job or different career goal every other week."

Cuban is Jewish. He grew up in Mt. Lebanon, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh, in a working-class family. His paternal grandfather changed the surname from "Chabenisky" to "Cuban" after his family emigrated from Russian Empire (modern territory of Ukraine) through Ellis Island. His maternal grandfather was a Bessarabian Jewish immigrant and his maternal grandmother was from Lithuania.

Cuban first ventured into business at age of 12. He sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive sneakers. A few years later, he earned money by selling stamps and coins. At age 16, Cuban took advantage of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike by running newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.

Instead of completing his senior year of high school, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, Cuban transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science degree in management. He chose Indiana's Kelley School of Business without even visiting the campus because it "had the least expensive tuition of all the business schools on the top 10 list". He had various business ventures during college, including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.

After graduating, Cuban returned to Pittsburgh and took a job with Mellon Bank, where he worked converting the old manual process at smaller regional banks to new computerized systems.

In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, where he first found a job as a bartender for a Greenville Avenue bar called Elan and then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.

Cuban co-founded MicroSolutions with support from his previous customers at Your Business Software. Initially, MicroSolutions operated as a systems integrator and software reseller. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. One of the company's largest clients was Perot Systems. The company grew to more than $30 million in revenue, and in 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe—then a subsidiary of H&R Block—for $6 million

(over $14.7 million today). He made approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.

In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner joined Audionet (founded in 1989 by Chris Jaeb who retained 10% of the company), combining their mutual interest in Indiana Hoosiers college basketball and webcasting. With a single server and an ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and $13.5 million in revenue for the second quarter. In 1999, Broadcast.com helped launch the first live-streamed Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. That year, during the dot com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock.

Yahoo!'s costly purchase of Broadcast.com is now regarded as one of the worst internet acquisitions of all time. Broadcast.com and Yahoo!'s other broadcasting services were discontinued within a few years after the acquisition. Cuban has repeatedly described himself as very lucky to have sold the company before the dot-com bubble burst. However, he also emphasized that he hedged against the Yahoo! shares he received from the sale and would have lost most of his fortune if he had not done so.

On January 4, 2000, Cuban purchased a majority stake in the NBA's Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from H. Ross Perot Jr.

In the 20 years before Cuban bought the team, the Mavericks won only 40% of their games and had a playoff record of 21–32. In the 10 years following, the team won 69% of their regular season games and reached the playoffs in each of those seasons except for one. The Mavericks' playoff record with Cuban is 49–57, including their first trip to the NBA Finals in 2006, where they lost to the Miami Heat.

NBA team owners historically play more passive roles and watch basketball games from skyboxes; Cuban, however, sits alongside fans while donning team jerseys. Cuban travels in his private airplane—a Gulfstream V—to attend road games.

In May 2010, Perot, who retained 5% ownership, filed a lawsuit against Cuban, alleging the franchise was insolvent or in imminent danger of insolvency. In June 2010, Cuban responded in a court filing maintaining Perot is wrongly seeking money to offset some $100 million in losses on the Victory Park real estate development. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2011, due in part to Cuban asserting proper management of the team due to its recent victory in the 2011 NBA Finals. In 2014, the 5th Circuit Court affirmed that decision on appeal. Following his initial defeat, Perot attempted to shut out Mavericks fans from use of the parking lots he controlled near the American Airlines Center.

In January 2018, Cuban announced the Mavericks would be accepting Bitcoin as payment for tickets in the following season. On March 4, 2021, Cuban announced the Mavericks would begin accepting Dogecoin as payment for both merchandise as well as tickets to games.

Cuban is an admirer of author Ayn Rand. About Rand's novel The Fountainhead, he said that it "was incredibly motivating to me. It encouraged me to think as an individual, take risks to reach my goals, and responsibility for my successes and failures. I loved it." His political views have leaned toward libertarianism. He held a position on the centrist Unity08 political organization's advisory council. Despite leaning towards libertarianism, Cuban posted an entry on his blog claiming paying more taxes to be the most patriotic thing someone can do.

In 1996, Cuban donated $6,000 to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. In 2002, Cuban donated $1,000 to Democratic California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.

On February 8, 2008, Cuban voiced his support for the draft Bloomberg movement attempting to convince New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run in the U.S. presidential election of 2008 on his blog. Cuban concluded a post lamenting the current state of U.S. politics: "Are you listening, Mayor Bloomberg? For less than the cost of opening a tent pole movie, you can change the status quo." He eventually voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

In November 2012, in response to Donald Trump offering President Obama $5 million to a charity of Obama's choosing if he released passport applications and college transcripts to the public, Cuban offered Trump $1 million to a charity of Trump's choosing if Trump shaved his head.

On December 19, 2012, Cuban donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to support its work on patent reform. Part of his donation funded a new title for EFF's staff attorney Julie Samuels: The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents.

In September 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart in a private ceremony in Barbados. They have two daughters, born in 2003 and 2006, and a son born in 2009. They live in a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) mansion in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas, Texas.

Cuban has invested in a plant-based meat alternative and is a pescatarian. He is a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction" after purchasing a Gulfstream V jet for $40 million over the internet in October 1999.

In 2024, Cuban was included in the Time 100 Most Influential People 2024.

1998 Kelley School of Business Alumni Award – Distinguished Entrepreneur: 1998

2011 Outstanding Team ESPY Award as owner of the Dallas Mavericks

2011 NBA Champion as owner of the Dallas Mavericks