I'm writing at around 5 pm on a Friday, so this probably won't be the detailed 1,000-word deep dive that many readers have come to expect from CelebrityNetWorth. Also, Kanye West is so weird now that it probably wouldn't be worth the 2-3 hours I may have at one point dedicated to discussing something related to Kanye West's net worth.
Long story short, earlier today Kanye West posted a screenshot to his Instagram page that contained two sentences typed in capital letters set on a white background. I'll embed the Instagram post a bit further down in this article, but here's what the text said:
"IN 2025, YE'S NET WORTH STANDS AT $2.77 BILLION USD AS CONFIRMED BY ETON VENTURE SERVICES. THE VALUATION IS BASED ON HIS MUSIC PORTFOLIO AND HIS SOLE OWNERSHIP OF THE YEEZY MARK."
(Photo by Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images)
What's Going on Here?
As I said, it's Friday at 5 pm, so I'm not going to get into a ton of detail and history.
What I will say is that, in my opinion, Kanye seems to be particularly focused on/obsessed with his net worth estimate. For the record, we currently estimate Kanye's net worth at $400 million. Not coincidentally, that's the exact same number listed on Forbes. I say "not coincidentally" because for the last decade-ish, whenever Forbes has published a net worth for Kanye, they appear to pull the number directly from CNW without giving us any credit. In my opinion, Forbes also sometimes appears to take the number on our site and add $25 or $50 million to make it appear original. But I digress.
Kanye's net worth has always been somewhat of a moving target. For example, in our March 2014 list of the richest rappers, we pegged him at $120 million. In February 2015, Kanye publicly claimed to be $56 million in debt. That same month, the Yeezy 1 debuted.
With the rise of the Yeezy brand, by 2017/2018, we upped the number to around $275 million.
Then, in April 2020, we learned some extremely valuable insights into Yeezy's performance up to that point and the brand's ownership structure. First off, we learned that Kanye owned 100% of the Yeezy brand, and Adidas was merely an exclusive partner (as opposed to the Jordan brand, which is 100% owned by Nike, with Michael Jordan as a highly paid royalty participant). Secondly, we learned that in the five years between 2014 and 2019 alone, the Yeezy/Adidas partnership generated $2.6 billion in cumulative gross revenue.
In 2020, the brand was on pace to generate $1.7 billion, and by 2025, this very year, the brand was projected to be doing around $3 billion in revenue per year. Obviously, that last point did not happen, but in April 2020, based on the financials that were made public, we crowned Kanye a billionaire for the first time with a net worth of $3.2 billion. We later upped his net worth to $6.6 billion on the theoretical present value of the Yeezy brand. That made him the richest black person in America and the richest rapper in the world BY FAR.
Then, as you know, he had a bit of a fall from grace.
After Kanye made anti-semitic remarks in various media appearances, Adidas ended its partnership with Yeezy and Kanye in October 2022. And though, even after the partnership ended he still owned Yeezy, losing Adidas and essentially setting his brand on fire cost Kanye BILLIONS (as he personally confirmed in the wake of the PR disaster).
I'm not an apparel expert, but as far as I can tell, the Yeezy brand has not produced anything new since the Adidas partnership ended. If that's incorrect, please feel free to correct me. If I'm correct, it's hard to argue that the Yeezy brand is valuable today. And yet, when you read his latest social media post, he's supposedly worth $2.77 billion because of "HIS SOLE OWNERSHIP OF THE YEEZY MARK."
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In my opinion, this situation feels a little bit like when Michael Scott declared bankruptcy in "The Office" by running around yelling, "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!!" thinking that's all it takes.
In my opinion, this situation feels like if I went out and found a company that was willing to say that the trademark/intellectual property of the name "Celebrity Net Worth" was worth $100 million. Therefore, as the owner of CNW, I'm worth $100 million. Prove me wrong! Who is to say that the CNW brand is NOT worth $100 million? It gets mentioned in the news constantly. Pretty much everyone knows our brand. We have the ability to put our brand name on any number of products and services that will definitely be worth billions someday…
Look, I'm not trying to start a fight with Kanye or anyone. It's Friday, and I should be out having a beer.
You can stop emailing us links to low-quality clickbait news sites that seemingly confirm Kanye is now a billionaire again.
We are going to stick with our current $400 million net worth for Mr. West. I will also note that, as of this writing (Friday at 5:46 pm), neither Forbes nor Bloomberg have updated their respective net worth estimates for Kanye to $2.77 billion. Bloomberg stopped tracking Kanye after he stopped being a billionaire in late 2022. Forbes is showing $400 million (wonder where they got that from)…
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Read more: Kanye West Vaguely Claims His "Net Worth Stands At $2.77 Billion"
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