Ulukaya is the founder and chairman of Chobani, the company which manufactures Chobani Greek-style yogurt. The Norwich, New York-based company also makes creamers, protein drinks and oat milk and owns La Colombe Coffee Roasters. Chobani shipped its first order in 2007 and had revenue of $3.8 billion in 2025.
Ulukaya's fortune is derived from a majority stake in Chobani, a manufacturer of Chobani Greek-style yogurt.
Ulukaya owns just under 90% of the company, according to a 2026 bond offering prospectus.
Chobani had revenue of $3.8 billion in the 12 months ending Dec. 27, 2025, according to the bond documents. Its valuation is based on the average enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiples of five publicly traded peer companies: Vita Coco, Celsius Holdings, A2 Milk, BellRing Brands and Lifeway Foods.
A $650 million equity investment in October 2025 valued Chobani at $20 billion, according to the New York Times. Bloomberg is valuing the company based on a peer analysis because details of the investment, including the identity of the investor, weren't disclosed.
The billionaire settled a lawsuit in 2015 brought by his ex-wife who was seeking a stake in the company. The terms weren't disclosed.
Chobani's head of corporate communications, Stephanie Palumbo, Ulukaya declined to comment on his net worth.
Ulukaya was born in Erzincan, Turkey in 1972, into a family with a history in the dairy industry. A self-proclaimed "dairy boy," he grew up working on his family's sheep farm and in its feta cheese manufacturing business. After studying political science at Ankara University, he moved to the U.S. In 1997 to study English at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. After Adelphi, he enrolled at the State University of New York in Albany, to pursue a business degree. At the urging of his father, he left college to run a wholesale feta cheese company he'd founded in Johnstown, New York in 2001.
Four years later, Ulukaya saw a classified advertisement for a shuttered yogurt factory once owned by Kraft Foods. With the help of a Small Business Administration loan, he purchased the factory and began to make yogurt under a new corporate entity, Agro-Farma. The first cases of Chobani Greek yogurt were shipped to Long Island supermarkets in 2007.
From 2009 through 2012, sales of Chobani increased almost 400 percent, according to data from New York-based company research firm PrivCo. Chobani was a sponsor of the 2012 London Summer Olympics and in July of that year, the company opened its first retail outlet, a yogurt bar in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood.
Ulukaya bought high-end coffee roaster La Colombe in 2015 and later sold it to Chobani. The company has diversified into creamers, protein drinks and oat milk and frozen smoothies and meals.