Producer and music executive Dr Dre has finally crossed a net worth of $1 billion, making it to the Forbes 2026 Billionaires List.
It’s been over a decade since the music mogul sold Beats by Dre to Apple for a staggering $3 billion, and he has finally crossed the $1 billion threshold.
“They need to update the Forbes list, sh*t just changed,” Dre said in 2014, after he and Jimmy Iovine sold their Beats by Dre business to Apple for $3 billion.
He has now become the sixth musician to be placed on the list, following Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and others. And although he is placed on the prestigious list, he is tied for 3332nd place alongside Rihanna, former presidential advisor Jared Kushner and others.
Beats by Dre deal
When Dr Dre secured the Beats deal in 2014, R&B vocalist and actor Tyrese Gibson falsely declared in a video that the music icon would become hip-hop’s first billionaire.
Forbes later proved this to be false, reporting that, after taxes, the finalised deal would leave Dr. Dre with a net worth of $800 million.
In partnership with Interscope co-founder and Beats’ primary owner Jimmy Iovine, Dr. Dre is 25 percent owner of Beats Electronics and would have accrued $480 million from the sale after taxes, according to Complex magazine.
According to the announcement by Forbes, Dre joins “an elite group of celebrities who have recently crossed the three-comma threshold”.
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Forbes 2026 Billionaires List
Elon Musk tops the Billionaires list for the second consecutive year and is the richest person ever recorded – worth an estimated $839 billion, according to the announcement.
Musk is the first person ever recorded to reach the $800 billion mark, as he moves toward becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
“It’s the year of the billionaire,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes’ Senior Editor for Wealth.
“The planet added more than one billionaire per day over the past twelve months as the AI-powered stock market boom boosted fortunes to previously unimaginable heights.”
Thanks to AI’s explosion, sizzling markets and favorable fiscal policies, a record 3,428 entrepreneurs, investors and heirs made this year’s World’s Billionaires list, 400 more than in 2025, according to Forbes.
The media company used stock prices and exchange rates from March 1, 2026, for its calculations.
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