Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman and television personality. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and co-owner of 2929 Entertainment. From 2012 to 2025, he was also one of the main "sharks" on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank. As of May 2025, Forbes has estimated his net worth to be US$6 billion.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cuban was involved in ventures from a young age, from selling garbage bags to running newspapers during a strike. He graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and embarked on a diverse business career that included founding MicroSolutions and Broadcast.com, both of which he sold at substantial profits. Cuban's investments span various industries, from technology and media to sports and entertainment. He has been a prominent figure in the NBA, known for his active involvement with the Mavericks (with which he won the 2011 NBA Championship as owner) and disputes with the league's management. In his side ventures, Cuban has been involved in philanthropy, political commentary, and reality television.

Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 31, 1958. His father, Norton Cuban, was an automobile upholsterer. Cuban described his mother, Shirley (née Feldman), as someone with "a different job or different career goal every other week."

Cuban is Jewish, and grew up in Mt. Lebanon, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh, in a working-class family. His paternal grandfather changed the surname from "Chabenisky" to "Cuban" after his family emigrated from Russian Empire (Modern territory of Ukraine) through Ellis Island. His maternal grandfather was a Bessarabian Jewish immigrant and his maternal grandmother was from Lithuania.

Cuban first ventured into business at age of 12. He sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive sneakers. A few years later, he earned money by selling stamps and coins. At age 16, Cuban took advantage of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike by running newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.

Instead of completing his senior year of high school, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, Cuban transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science degree in management. He chose Indiana's Kelley School of Business without even visiting the campus because it "had the least expensive tuition of all the business schools on the top 10 list". He had various business ventures during college, including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.

After graduating, Cuban returned to Pittsburgh and took a job with Mellon Bank, where he immersed himself in the study of machines and networking.

On July 7, 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, where he first found a job as a bartender for a Greenville Avenue bar called Elan and then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.