The websites put Gianluca Vacchi at $200m, while Vacchi himself says a single 13.2% slice of the family packaging-machine company sold for more than €700m.
Gianluca Vacchi has an unusual distinction among men who dance on Instagram: the internet undervalues him. Search for his net worth and the answer, from Celebrity Net Worth downwards, is usually $200m. His own account, given to Il Resto del Carlino in January 2024, is that one stake in the family business sold for more than €700m.
The two figures cannot be subtracted from each other. One is in dollars and claims to be a net worth. The other is in euros and is a gross sale price, before tax, part of it paid later. Set side by side, though, they are awkward for the websites.
The Vacchi story contains three kinds of number. The first comes from the institutions involved: BC Partners, the private equity firm that took the family company off the Milan exchange, and Reuters, which reported what came next. The second is Vacchi’s own, from a newspaper interview. The third is the celebrity-money estimate, and none of those points to a filing. They are worth keeping apart, because they do not agree.
What is Gianluca Vacchi’s net worth in 2026?
DDW found no net-worth figure for him from Forbes, Bloomberg or any named financial outlet.
What does exist is a range of estimates, from $150m to $500m, printed by aggregator sites. Against that range sits the one large figure with a named speaker attached. In January 2024 Vacchi said his 13.2% of IMA, the packaging-machinery group his family controls, had been sold for more than €700m, paid in two tranches. That is a sale price and his own description of it. Nobody has published what he paid in tax, what he holds elsewhere, or what he owes.
A YouTube blurb calls him a billionaire. Nothing published supports it.
Where does the Vacchi money come from?
It comes from machines that fill, seal and package other people’s products. BC Partners describes IMA as a company founded in 1961 that makes packaging and processing machinery for the pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics and e-mobility industries. Before private equity arrived, its controlling shareholder was SOFIMA, the Vacchi family’s holding company.
The family member who runs IMA is Gianluca’s cousin, Alberto Vacchi, its chairman and chief executive. Gianluca’s part was quieter on paper. He told Il Resto del Carlino he left the company “after 30 years”, which puts him inside the business for longer than most of his followers have been alive.
Packaging machinery is about as unphotogenic as a fortune gets. Its best-known shareholder has more than made up for it.
What happened when BC Partners took IMA private?
The deal that made the Vacchi stake easy to price began in 2020. BC Partners first invested that year, working with SOFIMA to buy a stake, and the transaction was announced in November. Invest Europe, quoting BC Partners, says the firm put in €911m in January 2021 at an enterprise value of €3.5bn.
The take-private completed on 10 February 2021. Private Equity Wire reported that IMA was fully delisted from Milan, that BC Partners and the Vacchi family between them controlled 100% of it, and that the deal, negotiated during Covid-19, was one of Europe’s largest take-privates. Stefano Ferraresi, a partner at BC Partners, was among the firm’s people on the deal. Alberto Vacchi welcomed partners who, he said, shared the family’s vision for the group.
Private equity is not built to stay, and it did not. In July 2023 BC Partners agreed to sell its stake to BDT & MSD Partners. Invest Europe puts that exit at an enterprise value of €6.9bn, with proceeds to BC Partners of €2,178m, a 2.4 times return on its money and an internal rate of return of 34%. According to Reuters, IMA confirmed that the Vacchi family would keep majority ownership, and the sale came two and a half years after a take-private that valued the equity at just under €3bn. BC Partners now lists the investment as realised, with an exit year of 2023.
The company the family half-sold during a pandemic was, on those figures, worth roughly twice as much two and a half years later. The Vacchis kept the larger half.
How much did Gianluca Vacchi get for his IMA stake?
He has said so himself, which is unusual. On 13 January 2024 ANSA reported that Vacchi had told Il Resto del Carlino his 13.2% of IMA had been sold for more than €700m. The first tranche was paid at once and the rest was due “after a few years”.
“Non sono solito parlare di cifre, ma sono una persona trasparente.” In English: “I don’t usually talk figures, but I am a transparent person.” He said it in the interview published by QN, the Carlino’s group site.
He presented the exit as a family matter. Open reported him saying he was not leaving through any lack of confidence in IMA, and that at 56 he would begin a new life in which he could dispose of his own assets. For a man whose wealth had spent three decades in a family holding, that is a precise ambition.
Several details have not been reported anywhere: who bought the 13.2%, when each tranche was or will be paid, and how much the second one is worth. Simple division of €700m by 13.2% gives an equity value of about €5.3bn for the whole of IMA. That is DDW’s arithmetic and not a published valuation, though it sits comfortably below the €6.9bn enterprise value of the 2023 deal.
Why do the websites say he is worth $200m?
The aggregators mostly repeat one another. Celebrity Net Worth gives $200m, and its own page mentions the sale of his stake for more than €700m without moving the headline figure. ZipDJ, in a “Richest DJs 2026” list, also gives $200m. DMarge and a Medium essay by Marvin Liao give a range of $200m to $500m. UrduPoint says $450m, a Bgfashion post says $300m, and in October 2022 Kemi Filani said $150m.
None of them cites a filing, a valuation or a named financial outlet. Some of them predate his January 2024 disclosure and have not been revised since, which is how a man can sell a shareholding for more than €700m and keep a $200m price tag online.
An estimate that never changes is usually a quotation of an earlier estimate.
Does Gianluca Vacchi make money from Instagram and DJing?
He has the audience for it. In January 2024 ANSA described him as a DJ and web star with 47 million followers, a figure that appears to cover several platforms. Forbes had counted 14.9 million on Instagram alone in April 2020.
No named outlet has reported what he earns from DJ sets, sponsorships or brand deals, so there is no figure to give. The dancing may pay. It may also be the most expensive hobby in Emilia-Romagna, and nobody outside his accountant’s office knows which.
His other businesses are easier to see. In the same interview he said his kebab chain, Kebhouze, had opened 24 outlets in two years, the latest on Oxford Street in London, and had lost €2m in 2022. He also said he had invested in 14 sectors and backed innovative start-ups. A kebab chain that loses €2m in a year is a rounding error against an IMA payout, which may be why he discussed both in one interview.
His life outside the balance sheet is a fixture of the feed. According to DMarge, his partner is Sharon Fonseca, the mother of their daughter.
What houses has Gianluca Vacchi bought?
Miami is the best documented. South Florida Agent Magazine reported that in 2020 he paid $24.5m for a furnished, seven-bedroom waterfront house on Sunset Island II in Miami Beach, which had been listed at $27m. The Washington Post was first to name him as the buyer, and Douglas Elliman agents represented both sides.
Earlier that year Forbes reported that he had listed his penthouse at 1800 Sunset Harbour, the so-called mansion in the sky, for $10.9m, with Dina Goldentayer of Douglas Elliman. According to Hola, he had bought it about five years before for $7.5m. Nobody has reported whether the penthouse sold or whether either property is still his in 2026.
Sardinia has not gone as smoothly. Il Resto del Carlino reported that he was placed under investigation in March 2023 over alleged building violations at a villa project in Porto Cervo, which the paper valued at about €15m. Prosecutors in Tempio Pausania seized the building site in June 2023, and on 29 June the review tribunal upheld the seizure. His lawyers said the issues were formal ones with no criminal relevance. No outcome has been reported, and at the last published stage the case was an investigation, not a conviction.
Each of these houses has a recorded price, and none of them has a current value.
So how rich is Gianluca Vacchi, really?
Richer than the websites say, on his own account. The documented figures are the more than €700m he says his IMA stake fetched, the $24.5m he paid for the Miami house and the $7.5m for the penthouse. The tax bill, the start-up portfolio, the earnings from the dancing and the losses at Kebhouze after 2022 are unknown, so nobody can turn those into a single honest net worth.
The second tranche from the sale, he said in January 2024, would arrive after a few years. Nobody has reported whether it has been paid.
Cover photograph via Hola.
