When the Hurun Global Rich List 2026 was released on Friday, one name stood out for an extraordinary surge in wealth, Ankur Jain. The New York-based entrepreneur’s net worth rose 217% in a single year. Jain, who is the founder and CEO of Bilt Rewards -a platform allowing renters to earn loyalty points on rent payments, was featured alongside other big wealth jumpers such as Brett Adcock and Rajendrakumar Agrawal.
The figure means Jain’s wealth more than tripled in the year leading up to the Hurun wealth snapshot on January 15, 2026. According to Forbes real time billionaire index, his net worth stands today at $3.4bn.
An Indian-American entrepreneur
Ankur Jain was born in Bellevue, Washington, to Indian immigrant parents who were involved in technology entrepreneurship. His father, Naveen Jain, was a Microsoft executive before founding the internet company InfoSpace in the late 1990s. He married WWE NXT wrestler Erika Hammond in 2024.
Jain grew up around startups. When he was six, his father left Microsoft to build InfoSpace. After school, Jain would often go straight to the office where both his parents worked. He is the son of tech billionaire Naveen Jain, a Wharton graduate who built a $10.75 billion company with fewer than 200 employees, married a former WWE wrestler, and now runs a platform used by one in four apartment renters in the United States.
“I would do my homework, play video games and sit in on meetings,” he recalls in an interview with Forbes.
He even accompanied his father during the company’s IPO roadshow in 1998. “It was for like a minute,” says Jain to Forbes. “They were having me explain the ability to search someone’s phone number in the white pages online.” The experience shaped him early. Jain began coding at age 10 and built his first website at 11.
InfoSpace’s story was dramatic. Its stock soared during the dot-com boom and Naveen Jain briefly became a billionaire in 2000. But the company’s fortunes later reversed and the elder Jain was eventually removed as CEO in 2002. A shareholder lawsuit later resulted in a legal settlement. The younger Jain rarely comments on that chapter, saying he was focused more on learning computers and building things.
Wharton years and the first start-up
Jain went on to study at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2011. Entrepreneurship began even before graduation. In his freshman year in 2008, Jain and friends launched an incubator called the Kairos Society.
“Most of it was a bunch of us building businesses together,” Jain explains to Forbes.After Wharton, he moved to Los Angeles with friends and began building startups.
In 2012, Jain co-founded Humin, an address-book app that organized contacts using contextual clues, integrating contacts, calendars and social data. The product gained traction and brought Jain early recognition. In 2015, he was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list.
That same year, dating platform Tinder acquired Humin in what was effectively an acqui-hire deal. Jain and his team joined Tinder, and he became Vice President of Product, gaining experience working inside a rapidly scaling tech company.
Building Kairos
In 2017, Jain left Tinder and moved to New York to build companies again. He revived his college incubator as Kairos, turning it into a venture studio focused on solving everyday problems.
Through Kairos, Jain helped launch start-ups addressing housing, healthcare and aging populations. Among them was Rhino, a fintech platform designed to replace traditional apartment security deposits with a low monthly insurance fee. Kairos went on to help launch companies valued at more than $6.5 billion collectively.
The initiative also partnered with President Barack Obama’s Start-up America Partnership, which explains that Jain’s interest in start-ups that address large societal problems.
The idea that led to Bilt Rewards
The idea for Jain’s biggest success came from a simple observation, rent is often the largest expense in a person’s life, yet it produces no rewards or financial benefits.
For millions of renters, thousands of dollars go to landlords every year without building any personal equity.
“That’s the problem Ankur Jain was hoping to solve with his startup, Bilt,” explains Jain to Forbes. Renters don’t end up owning the property, they can earn rewards for paying rent.
“They earn the equivalent of frequent flier miles or American Express points,” he explains.
The concept came together during a conversation with billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht, founder of Starwood Capital. Jain had been discussing hotel loyalty programs when Sternlicht explained how lucrative they actually are. “Then Barry explained to me that airlines and hotels make more profit from their loyalty programs than they do from operating hotels and flying planes,” he told Forbes.
“Delta makes $7 billion a year from their Amex Delta card,” Jain explains to Forbes.“People are willing to adjust their spending behavior to earn those [Delta] miles. Delta gets paid for every mile and dollar issued. It’s a pretty amazing business model.”
Jain began building Bilt Rewards in 2019, assembling a team that included former executives from American Express Membership Rewards and JetBlue. At first, progress was slow.
“The properties wanted to know if the merchants were on board, the merchants wanted to know if the properties were on board,” says Jain to Forbes. “It was really this chicken and egg problem.”
The pandemic unexpectedly helped accelerate discussions as property owners and partners became more open to new ideas. Major property groups such as AvalonBay Communities, Related Companies, and Equity Residential joined early. Merchant partners soon followed, including companies like SoulCycle and Lyft.
Bilt Rewards officially launched its service in 2021. The platform allows renters to earn reward points when paying rent, which can then be redeemed for travel, hotels, gyms and restaurants.
The company also introduced the Bilt Mastercard, developed with Wells Fargo, which allows renters to pay rent with a credit card without transaction fees, something most credit cards charge up to 4% for.
Cardholders earn points for rent payments, while all members receive a monthly base of points. The program partners with more than a dozen airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and fitness brands.
Bilt processes rent payments and earns revenue from payment processing fees, merchant partnerships and credit card transactions.
Jain’s plan connects renters, landlords and businesses into one ecosystem. Property owners also receive a share of the revenue generated through partner spending.
Rapid growth of Bilt
The concept has scaled quickly. Bilt says it has partnered with property owners covering more than four million rental homes across thousands of U.S. cities. The company estimates that 44 million US households pay rent, leaving enormous room for expansion.
“We’re still very much in the early innings. We’ll be doubling or tripling our network scale this year,” Jain says.
Bilt’s typical user is a younger renter. The average member is 29 years old, and the average monthly rent paid through the platform is about $2,800. Revenue for the Manhattan-based company is expected to exceed $200 million annually.
Investor interest has surged alongside user growth. Bilt raised $60 million in 2021, followed by $150 million in 2022, and later funding rounds. In July 2025, the company raised $250 million from private investors at a $10.75 billion valuation. Jain owns roughly 32% of Bilt Rewards, making him a billionaire.
Jain’s career has brought recognition across global entrepreneurship circles.He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017, and earlier received multiple “30 Under 30” recognitions, including from Inc. magazine and Forbes. He currently serves on the innovation board of the X-Prize Foundation and is also a member of the Pacific Council on Foreign Relations.
As reported by Forbes, Jain is also preparing to launch the Bilt Foundation, expanding the company’s mission into broader housing-related initiatives. Despite his rapid rise, Jain sees Bilt as just getting started. The company has signed up less than 10% of US rental properties so far, leaving a vast market still untapped.