Daniel Gilbert (born January 17, 1962) is an American billionaire, businessman, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and majority owner of Rocket Mortgage, founder of Rock Ventures, and owner of the National Basketball Association‘s Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert owns several sports franchises, including the American Hockey League‘s Cleveland Monsters, and the NBA G League‘s Cleveland Charge. He operates the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, home to the Cavaliers and Monsters. As of January 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$18.3 billion.
Gilbert is the founder and majority owner of Rocket Companies, a residential mortgage lender in the United States. The Detroit-based company closed $133 billion of mortgage volume in 2022. He’s invested in downtown Detroit real estate and is the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, a National Basketball Association franchise.
The majority of Gilbert’s fortune is derived from Rocket Companies, a home mortgage lender in the US. Gilbert owns about 70% of the company, based on its 2023 proxy statement and a 2015 bond prospectus that disclosed he owned 77% of the holding company Rock Holdings. Rocket Mortgage closed $133 billion in mortgage volume in 2022, according to its website.
Through Rock Ventures, Gilbert has bought more than 100 properties in Detroit and Cleveland, according to a February 2017 press release. Rock Ventures and its affiliates have invested more than $3.5 billion in properties in these cities. The properties are valued using the net property value for those properties, according to data compiled by researcher RCA, and adjusted to reflect the Bloomberg US Real Estate price return index. Gilbert is credited with the entire company. The billionaire also owns 72% of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team that’s valued based on a December 2022 report by valuation consultants Sportico.
Other assets including his gaming arm are included in his cash balance, which accounts for asset sales and the cost of acquiring assets such as the Cavaliers, as well as about $1.8 billion in personal proceeds from the sale of Rocket Companies shares through the IPO.
A spokesman for Rocket Companies didn’t respond to a request for comment on Gilbert’s net worth in November 2021.
Biography
Education: Michigan State University, Wayne State University Law School
Dan Gilbert was born in a Detroit suburb on Jan. 17, 1962, the son of a bar owner. He studied at Michigan State University and completed his law degree at Wayne State University. He delivered pizzas and used his earnings to set up lender Rock Financial in 1985, according to the company’s 1998 prospectus. A year later he started Rockloans.com, an online direct mortgage lender.
Rock Financial was bought by software maker Intuit for $370 million in 1999, and was renamed Quicken Loans. Three years later, Gilbert bought back the company, which thrived following Lehman Brothers’ collapse in 2008, having avoided entering the subprime mortgage market. The billionaire moved the company’s headquarters to downtown Detroit in August 2010, and through closely held investment company Rock Ventures started to buy buildings in the city center.
Gilbert took the company public again in August 2020 as Rocket Companies, Inc. At the time of the IPO, the company had a valuation of about $35 billion and was the country’s largest retail mortgage originator.
Gilbert, who bought a 72 percent stake in NBA franchise Cleveland Cavaliers in 2005, has also expanded into casinos, buying Detroit’s Greektown Casino in April 2013. He also owns Rock Ohio Caesars, which owns resorts and racetracks in Ohio and Kentucky.
The billionaire lives on the outskirts of Detroit and has five children with wife Jennifer. He attracted national attention with a letter accusing departing Cavaliers player LeBron James of betrayal in 2010. The pair reconciled in July 2014, with James returning to Cleveland for the 2014/2015 season.
Gilbert was hospitalized after suffering a stroke in May 2019.
Sports franchise ownership
In 2005, Dan Gilbert bought the Cleveland Cavaliers for $375 million, which was then a record price for an NBA team. Since then, he has overseen significant improvements to the team’s facilities and helped bring in top players like LeBron James.
In 2006, Gilbert also purchased the Cleveland Monsters, a professional ice hockey team in the American Hockey League. The team is affiliated with the NHL‘s Columbus Blue Jackets.
Gilbert has been an active and vocal owner, often speaking out on social media and in public about his teams and the NBA. He has also been involved in efforts to bring major sporting events to Cleveland, including the NBA All-Star Game and the NFL Draft.
Gilbert’s ownership of the Cavaliers has been marked by both success and controversy. The team won its first NBA championship in 2016, but also went through a tumultuous period after LeBron James left in 2018. Additionally, Gilbert has faced criticism for his treatment of former head coach David Blatt and for his aggressive pursuit of tax incentives and public funding for his various business ventures in Cleveland.
Overall, however, Dan Gilbert’s ownership of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Cleveland Monsters has been a significant part of his business and investment portfolio, and he remains a prominent figure in both the NBA and the city of Cleveland.
Other businesses and investments
Gilbert is a founding partner in the private equity group Rockbridge Growth Equity LLC (RBE). The partnership invests in growing businesses in the financial services, Internet technology, consumer-direct marketing, and the sports and entertainment industries.
RBE has significant investments in Gas Station TV,Robb Report,and RapidAdvance, among other ventures.
Gilbert is also an investor in Courtside Ventures, a venture capital fund investing across early-stage technology and media companies with a focus on sports and is a founding partner of Detroit Venture Partners (DVP), a venture capital firm that funds start-up and early-stage technology companies based primarily in Detroit. Some of the companies DVP has invested in includes LevelEleven, iRule and Marxent Labs.
Gilbert cofounded StockX, a stock market of things for high-demand, limited edition products such as sneakers. Gilbert is also invested and involved in the operation of several consumer-based technology-centered businesses, including Fathead, Veritix, Xenith, StyleCaster and Quizzle.
Gilbert launched nonprofit Bizdom in 2007, which promotes both tech and brick-and-mortar entrepreneurship in Detroit and Cleveland by supporting on-the-ground service providers.
In November 2009, Gilbert and a group of partners successfully backed a statewide referendum to bring casino gaming to Ohio‘s four largest cities. Through a joint venture with Caesars Entertainment Corporation, the groups operate urban-based casinos in both Cleveland and Cincinnati. The first of the casinos, Jack Cleveland Casino, opened in May 2012.
In 2013, Rock Ventures, the umbrella entity for Gilbert’s investments and real estate holdings, announced it had formed Athens Acquisition LLC, an affiliate of Rock Gaming, and acquired the majority interest in Greektown Superholdings Inc., owner of the Greektown Casino-Hotel located in downtown Detroit. In late 2018, Gilbert bought the online dictionaries, Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com.
In November 2017, former professional Call of Duty player and 100 Thieves CEO Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag announced that Gilbert had made a multimillion-dollar investment into the esports organization
Milestones
- 1962 Dan Gilbert is born in a Detroit suburb.
- 1985 Sets up mortgage lender Rock Financial.
- 1999 Sells Rock Financial to Intuit for $370 million in stock.
- 2002 Buys back online mortgage business from Intuit.
- 2005 Acquires majority stake in NBA franchise Cleveland Cavaliers.
- 2010 Starts to move Quicken Loans headquarters into downtown Detroit.
- 2012 Enters joint venture with Caesars Entertainment to develop regional casinos.
- 2014 Quicken announces it has issued 2 million loans.
- 2019 Gilbert suffers a stroke.
- 2020 Gilbert’s Rocket Companies begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
