Community Corner
Worcester's Lone Billionaire Is 359th Richest Man In U.S.
Valentin Gapontsev, 81, was newly added to the Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the nation on Wednesday.
WORCESTER, MA — Worcester's only billionaire, it appears, has gotten a little richer.
Russian-born physicist Valentin Gapontsev has been added to the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in the U.S. for the first time. Gapontsev, 81, founded the fiber-optic laser company IPG Photonics, and is worth an estimated $2.3 billion because of it, according to Forbes.
That means Gapontsev's wealth has grown by about $200 million since 2018, which is when the website AffluenceIQ estimated the state's top 50 wealthiest people. In Worcester, that puts Gapontsev above even the family owners of Polar Seltzer, and Dunkin' franchise mogul Robert Branca.
Gapontsev founded IPG Photonics in Russia in 1990, but moved the headquarters to Oxford in the late 1990s. The company's headquarters is still in Oxford, but also has a major facility in Marlborough.
Gapontsev owns multiple properties in the West Tatnuck area, including a large home atop a hill in a residential development. He also made headlines in 2018 when the U.S. Treasury Department tried to label him an "oligarch." Treasury backed away from that labeling one year ago, according to the Washington Post.
