Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate, investor, author, and former philanthropist.
In the 1970s, he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at an early age.
His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he established a mail-order record business. He opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records—later known as Virgin Megastores—in 1972. Branson’s Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, when he founded the airline Virgin Atlantic and expanded the music label Virgin Records. In 2004, he founded the spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic, based at the Mojave Air and Space Port, known for the suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo designed for space tourism.
In March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for “services to entrepreneurship”.
For his work in retail, music, and transportation (with interests in land, air, sea, and space travel), his taste for adventure, and his humanitarian efforts, he has become a prominent global figure. In 2007, he was listed among the 100 most influential people in the world.
In June 2020, Forbes listed Branson’s estimated net worth at $4.1 billion.