No. 206United States
Charles Ergen
Satellite TV · Denver, Colorado
Net worth
$14.3B
Today
−$99M−0.68%Past month
+$1.2B+9.29%As of Nov 11, 2026, 1:50 PM EST
Charlie Ergen is the cofounder and chairman of satellite and internet service company EchoStar. Ergen first began selling satellite dishes out of the back of a truck in Colorado in 1980. In 1995, EchoStar went public and also launched its first satellite, birthing pay TV subsidiary Dish Network. Ergen spun off Dish into a separate company in 2008 and remerged the businesses in December 2023, again under the EchoStar name. Today, the company has more than 7 million pay TV subscribers.
Net worth over time
+9.29%+$1.2B over the past month
$14B$13B$12B
Oct 12Nov 11
Principal holdings
2 positions| Company | Industry | Share | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
EchoStar Corporation Class A NASDAQ: ECHO | Media & Entertainment | 99.4% | $14.2B |
CONX Corp. US OTC: CNXX | Media & Entertainment | 0.6% | $89M |
Also known for
- Ergen is the son of an Austrian-born nuclear physicist who worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
- Ergen is an avid mountain climber who has reached the Mount Everest base camp.
“Part of management is to figure out how you're going to do things, and to be creative on how you're going to do things, and to prove the skeptics wrong.”