Bonner Upshaw Net Worth 2026: Basketball Career, Business

Bonner C. Upshaw III is a former professional basketball player from Mount Clemens, Michigan, who spent about a decade playing in Europe and then built Trion Solutions, a Troy-based professional employer organization (PEO), into one of the largest in the country. No reputable outlet such as Forbes or Celebrity Net Worth has published an estimate of his personal net worth. The $10 million figure that appeared on this page before came from a low-quality site and could not be verified, so it has been removed. His wealth is tied mainly to his co-ownership of Trion, a private company that does not report its profits or valuation.

What is Bonner Upshaw's net worth?

There is no credible published figure. Trion Solutions is privately held, and neither the company nor Upshaw has disclosed its revenue, profit or how ownership is split between him and co-founder David L. Stone. Without those numbers, any exact dollar amount for his personal wealth is a guess.

What can be documented is the size of the business he co-founded:

• When Trion formed in 2013 it handled payroll for about 4,000 worksite employees, with total payroll of roughly $85 million, according to City Lifestyle.
• By the end of 2023 it served about 60,000 client worksite employees with total payroll of $1.3 billion, the same publication reported.
• In 2023 the United States Professional Baseball League, a Trion client, described it as the largest Black-owned PEO in the country and the ninth-largest PEO overall, working with more than 800 client companies.

Note that payroll processed for clients is not Trion's revenue, and Trion's revenue is not Upshaw's income. The figures show scale, not personal wealth.

Bonner Upshaw's earnings and salary

Upshaw's pay as CEO of Trion has never been made public. The yearly, monthly and daily income numbers that were listed here earlier had no source and have been removed. What he has said about his playing salary points the other way from the old claims: he told DBusiness in 2017 that he did not earn the kind of money NBA players make, and that after paying an agent 10% in his first year he represented himself for the rest of his career to keep more of his pay.

Early life and family

Upshaw comes from a well-known family in Mount Clemens, the county seat of Macomb County, Michigan. His father, the late Bonner Upshaw II, became the first Black mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in St. Clair Shores in 1957, the first Black officer in the Mount Clemens Police Department in 1960 and its first Black detective in 1976, and led the Macomb County branch of the NAACP from 1990 to 1993, according to the Macomb Daily. His mother, Dorothy Upshaw, worked for 41 years as a supervisor at the Warren tank arsenal.

In June 2025 the Mount Clemens City Commission voted unanimously to rename a stretch of Kibbee Street as Upshaw Way, as reported by C & G Newspapers. The street was formally dedicated on Juneteenth 2026. Bonner Upshaw III was named among the family members being honored, alongside his parents and other relatives.

Earlier versions of this page named Dorothy Jean Upshaw as his wife. The sources we found identify Dorothy as the wife of Bonner Upshaw II, his father. We have not found a reputable source that names Upshaw III's spouse, so we do not publish one.

Education and basketball

Upshaw played high school basketball at Mount Clemens. A Detroit Free Press listing from March 1983 described him as a 6-foot-8, 185-pound senior there. He went on to play college basketball, though we could not confirm the school from a reliable source, so the college named on this page before has been removed.

After college he was drafted by the Wyoming Wildcatters of the Continental Basketball Association, then a feeder league for the NBA, but a broken hand kept him out that season, DBusiness reported. The next summer he moved to Europe and spent about 10 years as a professional, starting at forward for clubs in France, Switzerland, Macedonia and Portugal. He averaged 22 points, 10 assists and four rebounds a game over his career, according to the same article. While in Macedonia he played through the period of the Yugoslav wars, with fighting a few hours away.

Claims on the old version of this page that he was drafted by the Indiana Pacers, played for the Oklahoma City Thunder, played for the U.S. national team or won multiple championships have no support in any source we found and have been removed.

Professional life: from basketball to business

During his offseasons Upshaw returned to metro Detroit and worked at an employee leasing firm in Auburn Hills, an early form of what is now called a PEO. He retired from basketball in 1998 and went back to work at that firm before starting his own PEO, per DBusiness. He has said he knew he could not play forever and needed skills beyond the court.

Trion Solutions: the business behind his wealth

Trion is a professional employer organization. It takes over payroll and taxes, benefits administration, workers' compensation and regulatory compliance for small and mid-sized companies, which lets clients offer larger-company benefits, according to the Trion website. Upshaw is CEO and Stone is president. Stone told DBusiness that buying insurance in bulk for many clients is part of how the model keeps costs down.

The company is headquartered in Troy, Michigan, with offices in Scottsdale, Arizona; Aventura, Florida; and Traverse City, Michigan, and has more than 200 staff at its headquarters and major offices, per USPBL and City Lifestyle. Trion has repeatedly been named among the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For and has won Top Workplaces and Corporate Culture awards. City Lifestyle reported a client retention rate of 98% a year.

The earlier page also said Upshaw founded a software company called E Connect. Public directory listings connect his name to E Connect Inc., but we found no reliable article describing that company, so we do not make claims about it.

Age, height and weight

Upshaw's date of birth has not been published by a reliable source. Since he was a high school senior in 1983, he was likely born in the mid-1960s, which would put him around 60 in 2026. The 1983 Detroit Free Press listing gave his height as 6 feet 8 inches, not the 6 feet 2 inches the old page claimed. His current weight is not on record.

Net worth compared

For other business owners profiled on this site, see Bobby Saadian and Ben Sloss. Like Upshaw, many founders of private service companies have no published net worth because their ownership stakes and profits stay private.

Why there is no reliable estimate

Trion Solutions does not publish financial statements, and no reputable outlet has reported its valuation, its revenue or Upshaw's ownership share. The payroll totals reported in the press describe money flowing through Trion to clients' workers, not company profit. Until a credible publication reports those facts, the honest answer is that his net worth is not publicly known. We will update this page if that changes.