Judy Faulkner

A basement software company became a healthcare infrastructure business

Faulkner founded the company that became Epic Systems in 1979, originally operating from a Wisconsin basement. Forbes says the business began with roughly $70,000 of capital and that Faulkner wrote the original software herself, giving her a direct founder role from the company's earliest stage. ^[1]

Epic expanded by selling electronic medical-record software to hospitals and health systems rather than by pursuing a broad acquisition strategy. Forbes says the company never raised venture capital and developed its software internally, allowing Faulkner and other employee owners to preserve unusually tight control as the business scaled. ^[1]

That strategy eventually produced a large privately held software company serving major medical institutions and hundreds of millions of patient records. The economic engine behind Faulkner's wealth is therefore the equity value created as Epic's installed customer base and recurring software relationships expanded over decades. ^[1]

Control matters as much as company scale

Epic said in 2026 that Faulkner had created trusts designed to preserve a supermajority of the company's voting stock after her death while directing nearly all of her wealth to charity. The structure underscores how central retained ownership and voting control have been to the company's long-term model. ^[2]

Epic's annual sales and the value of the company are not the same as Faulkner's personal net worth. Her fortune reflects the portion of Epic she owns and the value assigned to that private stake, making founder equity rather than company revenue the relevant link between Epic's growth and her personal wealth. ^[1][2]