Ben Leventhal Net Worth 2026: Resy, Eater and Blackbird Founder

No reputable outlet has published a net worth for Ben Leventhal, the New York entrepreneur who co-founded the food site Eater, the reservation app Resy and, most recently, the restaurant loyalty and payments startup Blackbird. The $13.3 million figure and $500,000 salary that appear online have no source. His wealth comes from the sale of Resy to American Express in 2019 and his stake in Blackbird, and neither the Resy price nor his share of it has been disclosed.

What is Ben Leventhal's net worth?

Forbes, Bloomberg and Celebrity Net Worth have not estimated his fortune. What public reporting does show is that he has built and sold valuable companies: Eater is now part of Vox Media, Resy went to American Express, and Blackbird had raised $85 million from top venture investors by April 2025. New York magazine's Grub Street noted in 2023 that his perks included a townhouse in the West Village and his own parking spot at Yankee Stadium. None of that adds up to a verifiable dollar figure, so this page does not give one.

Where the money comes from

Eater (2005)

Leventhal started Eater in 2005 with his friend Lockhart Steele, a former Gawker managing editor. He says he came up with the name at a bar on Sullivan Street. The site borrowed Gawker's fast, knowing tone and became the most influential restaurant news site of its era; it is now owned by Vox Media. He has said the one thing he regrets is "Deathwatch," a feature that counted down the days until struggling restaurants closed.

Resy (2014–2019)

In 2014 he co-founded Resy with Gary Vaynerchuk and Michael Montero. Its first model, charging diners for hard-to-get reservations, did not work. The company instead won a niche handling bookings for the most sought-out restaurants in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, positioning itself against OpenTable. American Express acquired Resy in 2019 and folded it into its dining business for card members. The purchase price was not announced. Leventhal has said that once you sell a company, you have to accept whatever it becomes. As of 2023, about 16,000 restaurants worldwide could be booked through Resy, according to Wikipedia.

Blackbird Labs (2022–present)

Leventhal is founder and CEO of Blackbird Labs, a loyalty and payments app for independent restaurants built on blockchain technology. Diners earn a digital token called $FLY for visits and can spend it at restaurants in the network.

• 2022: $11 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures.
• April 2023: app goes live in New York City.
• October 2023: $24 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z); American Express becomes a major investor; expansion to San Francisco and Los Angeles announced, The New York Times reported.
• 2024–2025: $50 million Series B led by Spark Capital, with Coinbase, a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures and Amex Ventures. Fortune reported the round included token warrants, that total funding reached $85 million, and that the network covered more than 600 restaurants in New York, San Francisco and Charleston. Leventhal declined to disclose the valuation.
• February 2025: launch of Flynet, Blackbird's own blockchain built on Coinbase's Base network.

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Recent changes (2025–2026)

In September 2026 Leventhal testified before a U.S. House subcommittee on how crypto payments could help small businesses. Restaurant Business reported that he argued card swipe fees, now restaurants' third-largest expense, could be cut by more than half using Blackbird's system; he gave the example of a $4.20 coffee costing a cafe 6% to process by card versus 2.5% through Blackbird. The same month, Flynet began letting developers and restaurants build their own apps on the network.

Early life and education

Leventhal grew up in Westchester County and on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He attended the Horace Mann School, where he hit .452 for the varsity baseball team, and his father was a lawyer whose clients included the New York Yankees. He majored in finance at George Washington University and returned to New York in the fall of 2001.

The earlier version of this page said his father was an engineer, that he earned a bachelor's degree at Horace Mann (a high school) and a master's at George Washington, and that he worked for engineering firms. Those claims were wrong or unsupported and have been corrected.

Age, height and family

Grub Street described Leventhal as 44 years old in August 2023, and The New York Times gave his age as 28 in February 2007. No reliable source lists his height or weight; the old figures (36 years old, 5 feet 5 inches, 70 kg) were removed. We could not find a reliable source naming his spouse, so the previous claim about his wife and the photo captioned as her have been removed.

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Net worth compared

Among restaurant-industry founders on this site, Brendan Sodikoff of Hogsalt Hospitality is in a similar position: a well-known, well-funded private business with no published personal net worth.

Why there is no reliable figure

The key numbers are private: the Resy sale price and founder payouts, Blackbird's valuation and his ownership share, and the value of any $FLY tokens or token warrants tied to the company. Until a reputable outlet reports them, his net worth is not publicly known.