Cargill is the most dominant, yet least known, family-owned empire in America—controlling 25% of US grain exports and touching nearly everything on your plate.
Sam introduces Cargill as the largest private company in America for 40 years, 88% family-owned, producing more billionaires than any other company, with revenue exceeding Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Starbucks combined—yet almost nobody knows what it does. ✦ AI generated
Sam · My First Million · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 0:00
It is the largest private company in America for the last 40 years. It is owned 88% by the family and has produced more billionaires in one family than any other company ever. They do more revenue than Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Starbucks combined. ... Imagine you eat a hamburger. Cargill probably sold the farmer the seed and the fertilizer to grow the grain. They bought the grain from the farmer and stored it at their grain elevator. They shipped it on their barge that they built in their ships that they built to a processing plant where it's processed into animal feed. And then they feed that to cattle who they then slaughter. They then store the meat at their meat packing plants, sell the beef to the restaurant. By the way, the restaurant has to buy their salt. They sell like all of the salt to all of the fast food chains in the country. And then the corn syrup that they processed out of the corn gets put into the ketchup. The soybean oil that's used for the fries, the starch that's used in the milkshake, that's all Cargill.
verbatim transcript · starts at 0:00
0:00When I Googled this family, the words came up were silent dominance, middlemen at planetary scale. [laughter] All right, Sam, I have a uh I have a Billy of the Week for you. An MFM classic. This is not just any Billy of the Week. This is one of the biggest Billies in America. One that I wasn't really that aware of. I think you will know more than me about this, but I
0:29would say most people don't. >> Wait, can I guess? >> Let me read you. Let me tell you three things about it, then you could take a guess. >> Okay. >> Okay. All right. It is the largest private company in America for the last 40 years. >> Mhm. >> It is owned 88% by the family and has produced more billionaires in one family than any other company ever. They do
0:52more revenue than Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Starbucks combined. Is it Mars or Coke? >> You're in the right neighborhood. Estee Lauder. >> Okay, you left the neighborhood briefly. Come [laughter] back to the other neighborhood of like sort of rich redneck [laughter] families of America. It is Cargill. >> Oh yes. >> So the Cargill family. So I didn't really know anything about this family. Can I just tell you a little bit about
1:21their story and and what they do because this is a dominant business story of all time. Wait, first tell me why did this interest you? Why' this catch your attention? >> Remember when I was at your house and you were like, "There's this closet here, by the way, that we found. There's this extra storage room that we didn't even know till we lived here for 2 months." That's how I felt finding out
1:40that one of the most wealthy families in America. And I don't know their story. That's how I felt as as the host of My First Million. I just felt like I needed to write a wrong. >> Okay, I understand. >> And and by the way, how did I find it? There was a Reddit thread that was tell me about billion-dollar industries that I probably don't know about and it was
1:58like the first one was SAND and the second one was this and the third one is this reinsurance. It's like well there's insurance companies and then they buy insurance that's called reinsurance and then the reinsurance guess what they have reinsurance companies behind them. It's just insurance all the way down baby. And so I was reading through this thread and then one was Cargill and I was like oh Cargill. So what they did,
2:16so the story is um back in the day as America was was sort of getting its feet and railroads had been had been uh started to get built, farmers needed to offload their crops, their grain um and they needed to sell them. So they could either sell it individually so the farm could try to sell individually to a buyer and figure out how to transport it there or they could work with a
2:36middleman. And so cargo became the biggest middleman on the planet for basically just initially storing grain. So they would go right next to where the railroad is. They would build what's called a grain elevator, which is basically a giant storage facility for grain so that it wouldn't spoil very quickly. And the farmers could come drop it off. They would get like coat check. They'd get an IOU that says, "I will pay
- ·Largest private US company for 40 years
- ·88% family-owned, most billionaires per family
- ·Revenue exceeds Goldman, Nike, Starbucks combined
- ·Controls 25% of US grain exports
- ·Sells seed and fertilizer to farmers
- ·Buys, stores, ships grain via its own barges and ships
- ·Processes grain into feed, raises and slaughters cattle
- ·Owns meat packing, supplies beef to restaurants
- ·Supplies salt to all major fast-food chains
- ·Corn syrup for ketchup, soybean oil for fries
- ·Starch from Cargill corn goes into milkshakes