Two New Hampshire men are in the top 100 of the Forbes 400, which annually lists the richest people in America.
Richard Cohen, of Keene, a grocery wholesaler and software creator, is 45th on the list, and Alexander Karp, of Lyman, cofounder and CEO of data mining firm Palantir Technologies, is 74th. The Forbes 400 was released Sept. 9.
It’s Cohen’s fourth year in the Forbes 400, and Karp’s second.
Both men get a Forbes Philanthropy Score of 1, on a scale of 1-5. The score measures how much of the money that goes into a company’s charitable foundation actually goes “out the door” to fund good works. A score of 1 is the lowest score, and means that less than 1% of the billionaire’s personal wealth went to charitable causes. Cohen and Karp aren’t alone in getting the lowest Philanthropy Score on the list – 159 of the 400 scored a 1, including the top billionaire, Elon Musk and no. 201, President Trump.
Putting money into a charitable foundation shields it from taxes, but the IRS requires that only 5% of a private charitable foundation’s money must be disbursed.
Cohen, 73, who is on the Forbes list as “Rick Cohen & Family,” has a net worth of $22.1 billion, according to Forbes. He is owner and CEO of C&S Wholesale Grocers, which is based in Keene and is the nation’s largest grocery wholesaler and the eighth-largest ranked company, with some $34 billion in annual revenue, according to Forbes.
His net worth is up from $10.4 billion in 2024. Cohen is ranked 86th on the Bloomberg billionaire’s list, which is updated daily, with a net worth of $25.9 billion.
Most of the family’s wealth comes from Symbotic, a warehouse automation firm that has a partnership with Walmart to automate its 42 distribution centers, his Forbes profile says.
Cohen’s grandfather started the grocery wholesale business in 1918 in Worcester, Mass., then moved it to Vermont. Cohen, a Worcester native, moved the business across the border to Keene more than a decade ago.
Cohen launched Symbotic to solve his own grocery distribution problems, Forbes’ profile says.
Forbes says Cohen “build Symbotic largely in stealth,” taking in public in a $5.5 billion SPAC deal sponsored by venture capital giant SoftBank in 2022, the first year he appeared on the Forbes list.
Karp made local news in 2021, when he gave $180,000 to David “River Dave” Lidstone, a Canterbury man whose riverbank cabin burned down amidst a property dispute, then got in a dispute with the town when he refused to leave the land.
Karp, 57, a New York City native who has had a Grafton County residence for the past few years, cofounded Palantir with Peter Thiel, who is 40th on the list this year. He has a personal net worth of $14.3 billion, according to Forbes. He is ranked 361 on Forbes’ world billionaires list.
Palantir received early backing from CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel, and does contract work for government agencies like the Department of Defense, the FBI and the Danish National Police, according to Karp’s Forbes profile.
The company “provides data integration and AI infrastructure platforms to help organizations, including governments and businesses, make data-backed decisions by managing complex and sensitive data,” according to the Velotix AI guide. Palantir has been the subject of protests globally for working closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Trump administration.
Karp met Palantir co-founder Thiel while at Stanford Law School, and was a money manger before he started Palantir in 2004.
Thiel is a strong Trump supporter, and the company’s fast recent growth is tied to both the evolution of artificial intelligence and government contracts with the current administration. Palantir’s market capitalization is expected to be $406.6 billion by the end of this year, up from $37.36 billion in 2023 and $108.14 billion in 2024. Market capitalization is the total worth of a company’s shares.
Karp took Palantir public on the New York Stock Exchange in an unusual direct listing process in 2020, according to Forbes.