What Is Thirty Ink? Inside Steph Curry’s 74M Empire

In June 2025, CNBC cameras followed Stephen Curry into a mahogany-lined conference room near San Francisco’s Financial District. Ten executives from different companies sat around the table. They all reported to the same boss, and the company they worked for wasn’t the Golden State Warriors. It was Thirty Ink, Curry’s holding company. He was running a monthly operations meeting for the conglomerate he’d built while winning four NBA championships. A year later, that conglomerate hit a new milestone: a 10-year, $400 million partnership with Chinese sportswear giant Li-Ning, the largest sneaker deal an athlete has signed outside Nike or Adidas. (For more on how the world’s highest-paid athletes turn fame into wealth, see our breakdown of the top earners in 2026.)

Thirty Ink is the holding company for all of Stephen Curry’s business ventures, named after his jersey number 30 and an allusion to leaving a permanent mark. It generated $173.5 million in revenue and $144 million in EBITDA in 2024, with every single division profitable. Most athlete “empires” are endorsement portfolios dressed up with a logo. Curry’s is an operating conglomerate where he serves as CEO, and the model is worth studying whether you’re building a personal brand, a new business in 2026, or both.

Last updated: June 2026

Quick answers

What companies does Steph Curry own?

Curry owns and operates six businesses under the Thirty Ink umbrella: Curry Brand (sneakers and apparel, now partnered with Li-Ning), Unanimous Media (film and TV production), Gentleman’s Cut (bourbon), Underrated Golf and Underrated Basketball (youth sports leagues), Penny Jar Capital (venture capital), and 7k (a branding and marketing consultancy for athletes).

How much does Thirty Ink make?

Thirty Ink generated $173.5 million in revenue and $144 million in EBITDA in 2024, according to CNBC’s reporting. Every business within the portfolio was profitable. The bulk of revenue came from Curry Brand’s partnership with Under Armour, which ended in November 2025 and was replaced by a $400 million Li-Ning deal in June 2026.

Every division inside Thirty Ink

Thirty Ink isn’t a vanity label slapped on a few endorsements. It’s a structured holding company with a COO (Tiffany Williams), monthly operations meetings, and six distinct business units that each generate revenue independently. Here’s what each one does and why it exists.

Curry Brand (sneakers, apparel, golf)

Curry Brand is the revenue engine. Under the 13-year Under Armour partnership, it was the company’s dedicated basketball and golf footwear division, and it drove the majority of Thirty Ink’s $173.5 million 2024 topline. That relationship ended in November 2025 when Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank decided to refocus on the core UA brand, calling basketball “roughly $100 million globally” for the company. Curry retained his logo, trademarks, and brand name in the split.

Seven months later, Curry signed with Li-Ning. ESPN reported the deal at $400 million over 10 years. It covers basketball products, athleisure lifestyle wear, a full golf line, and the ability for Curry to sign male and female athletes under the Curry Brand banner. Curry plans to open branded retail stores in both the U.S. and China. One detail that shaped the decision: Curry personally tested shoes from two Li-Ning signature athletes, fellow Warrior Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade, and preferred the comfort and fit over rival pitches that offered more money.

Unanimous Media (film and TV)

Curry co-founded Unanimous Media in 2018 with producer Erick Peyton. The production company develops television, film, and digital content focused on family, faith-based, and sports storytelling. It has a global talent partnership with NBCUniversal and co-produced Goat, the Sony Pictures Animation film released in February 2026 that grossed $194 million worldwide at the box office. That’s not a rounding error. Few athlete-backed production companies ship a hit that clears $100 million domestically.

In May 2026, Unanimous partnered with Bryan Smiley’s Hard Carry Media to build a creator-led sports content platform focused on NIL college basketball players, targeting YouTube and TikTok distribution. The venture reflects Curry’s bet that the next generation of sports media won’t come from networks. It’ll come from athletes who already have audiences. That’s the same dynamic playing out in creator economy family businesses, where the IP owner’s bargaining position determines everything.

Gentleman’s Cut (bourbon)

Gentleman’s Cut is Curry’s premium bourbon brand. Celebrity liquor brands have a mixed track record (remember when seemingly every actor launched a tequila line?), but Gentleman’s Cut has remained profitable within the Thirty Ink portfolio. Curry’s approach mirrors his broader brand philosophy: fewer SKUs, higher quality, no mass-market discounting. The bourbon contributes to Thirty Ink’s revenue diversification beyond apparel and media. If you’re thinking about launching your own side business, Curry’s approach to the spirits brand is instructive: he didn’t try to own the distillery. He owns the brand and licenses the production, keeping capital requirements low and margins high.

Underrated Golf and Underrated Basketball

Fewer than 2% of all golfers in the U.S. are Black or Latino. Curry founded Underrated Golf in 2019 to change that number, committing a seven-figure personal investment so kids could be recruited on talent, not family income. The Underrated Golf Tour, now in its fifth season for summer 2026, has visited 16 U.S. stops over four seasons, produced 94 alumni, and sent 83 of them to play college golf, per the AJGA.

Underrated Basketball runs a parallel model for hoops. Both programs sit inside Thirty Ink as purpose-driven businesses, not charities. They generate revenue through sponsorships (KPMG sponsors the golf tour) while feeding Curry’s “purpose plus profit” thesis: every Thirty Ink business has to do both.

Penny Jar Capital (venture capital)

Penny Jar Capital is the early-stage VC firm Curry co-founded in 2021 with college teammate Bryant Barr and investor Rich Scudellari. The firm has made 21 investments with check sizes ranging from $100,000 to $10 million, and a sweet spot around $1 million. Portfolio companies include Upwind (Series B, January 2026) and Praxis Labs (exited July 2025). Penny Jar filed for a Fund II in late 2024 with no publicly disclosed target amount. Curry serves as a special adviser, helping source deals and open doors for portfolio companies. Harvard Business School published a case study on the firm’s model. For founders looking at how founders keep control after an IPO, Curry’s VC approach offers a parallel lesson in maintaining decision-making power across a growing portfolio.

7k (branding consultancy)

7k is Thirty Ink’s marketing and branding agency for other athletes. It’s the least publicly visible division but represents something unusual for the athlete business world: Curry monetizing his team’s brand-building expertise by offering it as a service to other professional athletes looking to build off-court businesses. Think of it as Thirty Ink’s consulting arm.

Why did Steph Curry leave Under Armour?

Curry and Under Armour parted ways in November 2025 after 13 years together. The split came down to a gap between what Curry wanted to build and what Under Armour was willing to fund. Curry had signed a lifetime deal with Under Armour just two years earlier, but CEO Kevin Plank’s strategic pivot back to the “core UA brand” meant basketball was deprioritized. Multiple reports cited a specific friction point: Curry wanted to sign UConn guard Azzi Fudd as a foundational Curry Brand athlete. Under Armour never made Fudd an offer. People close to the situation said it “genuinely bothered” Curry.

Under the separation agreement, Curry kept his logo, trademarks, and the Curry Brand name. That’s unusual. Most athletes who leave a shoe company leave empty-handed. Curry’s negotiating power came from the lifetime contract’s terms and the fact that he’d built enough independent brand equity for the name to carry value on its own. Fudd, incidentally, signed with Thirty Ink after the split and is now part of the Li-Ning partnership.

How the Li-Ning deal changes Curry’s business

The $400 million Li-Ning contract isn’t just a bigger paycheck than Under Armour. It’s a different kind of deal. Under Armour gave Curry a sub-brand within a larger company. Li-Ning is giving Curry a standalone brand with global retail ambitions.

The deal includes basketball footwear and apparel, athleisure lifestyle products, and a full golf line. Curry can sign athletes (men and women) directly under the Curry Brand banner. He’s planning brick-and-mortar Curry Brand stores in both the U.S. and China, which would make him one of the few active athletes with a standalone retail footprint outside of Michael Jordan’s brand within Nike. The SpaceX IPO lessons for founders apply here too: controlling distribution is how you control the brand long-term.

The China angle matters enormously. Li-Ning is one of China’s two dominant sportswear companies (alongside Anta), and basketball has massive cultural traction there. Curry chose Li-Ning over rival pitches that offered more money, partly because he liked the shoes: he tested Jimmy Butler’s and Dwyane Wade’s Li-Ning signatures and preferred their comfort and construction. That’s a founder-operator decision, not an endorser picking the highest bidder.

What does Steph Curry earn from all of this?

Forbes ranked Curry sixth among the world’s highest-paid athletes in 2026, with an estimated $124.7 million in total earnings. Only Cristiano Ronaldo, Canelo Alvarez, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, and Shohei Ohtani placed higher. His NBA salary accounts for a portion, but off-court income from Thirty Ink’s businesses now represents the majority of his earnings.

Net worth estimates range from $240 million to $300 million depending on the source, and that’s before the Li-Ning deal’s full economics flow through. The $144 million EBITDA figure from 2024 is striking because Thirty Ink doesn’t carry the operational costs a traditional consumer brand does. It’s a holding company that earns primarily through licensing, royalties, and equity in brand partnerships, meaning the gap between revenue and earnings is unusually wide.

The “purpose plus profit” model

Every profile of Curry’s business empire mentions the phrase “purpose and profit” or “elevate the under” (Thirty Ink’s tagline). It sounds like marketing copy. But it shows up in actual capital allocation decisions. Curry funded Underrated Golf with seven figures out of pocket, not through a sponsor. He and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation has invested over $90 million in Oakland communities since 2019, providing 25 million meals to kids and families, remodeling 23 schoolyards, redesigning 14 cafeterias, and modernizing three libraries across Oakland Unified School District.

In May 2026, a private lunch with Curry and Warren Buffett sold at auction for $9 million. Buffett matched the winning bid for both benefiting nonprofits (GLIDE and Eat. Learn. Play.), bringing the total charitable impact to roughly $27 million from a single meal.

The business argument for purpose isn’t abstract. Underrated Golf’s KPMG sponsorship wouldn’t exist without the social mission. Unanimous Media’s NBCUniversal deal leans on the company’s track record with inclusive storytelling. Curry’s brand commands premium partners because the purpose component gives corporate partners a story they can tell their own stakeholders. It’s a flywheel, not a tax.

What makes Thirty Ink different from other athlete empires?

Most athletes with “business empires” actually have endorsement portfolios. They lend their name and likeness to products built and operated by someone else. Curry’s model is different in three specific ways.

First, he’s the CEO. Not a “creative director” or “brand ambassador.” Tiffany Williams runs day-to-day operations as COO, but Curry chairs the monthly strategy meetings, approves new ventures, and made the Li-Ning decision personally. Inc. Magazine’s 2024 profile described Curry leading Thirty Ink like a “player-coach who sets the plays but trusts his team to run them.”

Second, every division is profitable. The CNBC documentary Curry Inc (June 2025) revealed that Thirty Ink doesn’t subsidize underperforming brands with endorsement income. Each entity has to stand on its own.

Third, Curry is building transferable infrastructure. The 7k consultancy helps other athletes build their own off-court brands using frameworks Thirty Ink developed internally. Penny Jar Capital deploys investment expertise across the tech ecosystem. These aren’t vanity projects. They’re businesses that grow whether or not Curry is actively playing basketball.

The closest comparison is LeBron James’ SpringHill Company, which also spans media and brand ventures. But SpringHill operates primarily as a content and marketing company. Thirty Ink is structured more like a traditional conglomerate: multiple independent P&Ls under one holding company with shared strategy and a unified brand thesis. It’s the kind of strategic architecture that’s increasingly relevant for founders wondering whether they’re building a startup or a business. Curry chose business.

Who runs Thirty Ink?

Tiffany Williams serves as COO of Thirty Ink and handles day-to-day operations across the portfolio. Erick Peyton co-runs Unanimous Media as a producing partner. Bryant Barr and Rich Scudellari manage Penny Jar Capital. Curry’s approach to leadership mirrors what he does on the court: set the vision, recruit people who are better than you at the details, and stay involved enough to make the calls that matter without micromanaging the execution.

The company employs a lean team relative to its revenue. That $144 million EBITDA on $173.5 million revenue reflects a capital-light structure. Thirty Ink doesn’t manufacture shoes or produce bourbon itself. It owns the brand equity and IP, partners with operational companies (Li-Ning for shoes, an undisclosed distillery for Gentleman’s Cut), and captures value through licensing, royalties, and equity stakes.

What’s next for Steph Curry’s business empire?

With the Li-Ning deal signed, a likely Warriors contract extension coming in late summer 2026, and Thirty Ink posting record financial results, Curry’s business trajectory is accelerating at the same time his playing career enters its final years. He’s 38. The succession question every athlete-founder faces is whether the empire survives retirement.

Curry’s answer is structural. Every Thirty Ink business has leadership that operates independently. Unanimous Media produces content whether Curry is on a film set or not. Penny Jar Capital deploys checks whether Curry sources the deal or the team does. The Li-Ning partnership includes retail stores and athlete signings that create value beyond Curry’s personal on-court relevance.

The test will come when Curry hangs up his sneakers. But the $144 million EBITDA, the standalone profitability across divisions, and the infrastructure investments in retail, media, and venture suggest the empire was built to outlast the playing career that funded it. Few athletes can say that. Curry’s bet is that Thirty Ink can. And given the trajectory so far, the market seems to agree. The biggest trends of 2026 point toward exactly this kind of model: personal brand as holding company, with multiple revenue streams that don’t depend on any single partner or platform.

Written by Grace Hawkins for GreyJournal. Have a story tip? Email editorial@greyjournal.net