Forbes is an American business media company founded in 1917 by B.C. Forbes and Walter Drey. It publishes Forbes magazine and forbes.com, covering business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, and personal wealth, and is best known for its ranked lists, including the Forbes 400, the World's Billionaires, the Global 2000, and 30 Under 30. It also runs conferences, licensed international editions, and paid membership councils for executives.
The Forbes family ran the magazine for nearly a century; B.C. Forbes's grandson Steve Forbes remains chairman and editor-in-chief. Its annual rich list, launched in 1982, made net-worth ranking a signature franchise that later spread across its brand extensions. Around 2010 the company opened forbes.com to a large network of outside contributors paid largely by traffic, which expanded its output and search footprint while drawing recurring criticism that the Forbes name was lending authority to lightly edited, promotional content. In 2014 Hong Kong-based Integrated Whale Media Investments acquired a majority stake; a 2023 agreement to sell control to Luminar founder Austin Russell at a valuation near $800 million collapsed that November when his financing failed to close.
Forbes contributor 📝Jules Schroeder interviewed me in 2016 for a piece her editors retitled "📝The Magic Formula Behind Going Viral On Reddit." The clickbait headline extended my "📝Reddit Marketing Expert" label and set off 📝The r/conspiracy Incident.