Entrepreneurs
- Dankmar Adler – architect
- John Jacob Astor – business magnate, merchant and investor and the first multi-millionaire in the United States
- John Jacob Astor IV – millionaire businessman, real estate builder, inventor, writer and a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War
- William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor – financier and statesman
- George Frederick Baer – lawyer, Social Darwinist railroad baron (former President of the Reading Railroad)
- Ralph Baer – father of the home video game console
- John Jacob Bausch – optician who co-founded Bausch & Lomb
- Andy von Bechtolsheim – co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of the first investors in Google
- Joseph Augustus Biedenharn – credited with first bottling the popular soda fountain drink Coca-Cola in the summer of 1894
- Maximilian Berlitz – Berlitz Language School
- Bernard Baruch – financier, stock-market speculator, statesman, and political consultant
- William Edward Boeing – aviation pioneer who founded The Boeing Company
- Henry Buhl, Jr. – entrepreneur and public science educator
- Walter Chrysler – Chrysler automobile developer
- Noah Dietrich – CEO of the Howard Hughes empire
- Walt Disney – film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
- John Doerr – venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
- August Duesenberg – automobile pioneer manufacturer
- Fred Duesenberg – automobile pioneer designer, manufacturer and sportsman
- Edward Filene – businessman, social entrepreneur and philanthropist
- Harvey Firestone – founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company
- Nicholas C. Forstmann – one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm.
- Theodore J. Forstmann – one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm, and chairman and CEO of IMG, a leading global sports and media company
- August Charles Fruehauf – blacksmith who invented the tractor trailer or semi-trailer (Sattelschlepper in German) in 1914 and founded the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation
- Bill Gates – chairman of Microsoft.
- Gustav Goelitz – candy and ice cream merchant whose endeavours led to candy corn and the Jelly Belly candy company
- Theodor August Heintzman – piano manufacturer (Heintzman & Co.) and inventor
- Henry J. Heinz – H. J. Heinz Company ketchup founder
- H. J. Heinz II – best known as Jack Heinz, a business executive and CEO of the H. J. Heinz Company
- Richard Hellmann – mayonnaise company founder
- Milton S. Hershey – Hershey chocolate founder
- Barron Hilton – chairman of the Hilton Hotel chain and grandfather of Paris Hilton
- Conrad Hilton – founder of the Hilton Hotel chain and great grandfather of Paris Hilton & Nicky Hilton
- Richard Hilton, Businessman and father of Paris Hilton
- Max Kade – pharmaceutical industry tycoon, endowed the Max Kade foundation
- Steve Jobs – co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc.
- Otto Hermann Kahn – investment banker
- Edgar J. Kaufmann – department store entrepreneur
- Peter Kern – confectioner and mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee
- John W. Kieckhefer – pioneer in the use of fibre shipping containers and one of the wealthiest men in America in 1957
- John Kluge – television industry mogul
- William Knabe – industrialist and piano-manufacturer
- Lynne Koplitz - Lynne is a graduate of Troy State in Alabama and is a female comedian.
- Bernard Kroger – chain grocer
- Louis Kurz – major publisher of chromolithographs in the late 19th century
- Henry Emanuel Lutterloh – Quartermaster General under George Washington
- Johan Adam Lemp – father of modern brewing in St. Louis, started the William J. Lemp Brewing Company
- Alfred Lion – co-founder of Blue Note Records
- Solomon Loeb – banker, co-founder of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
- Henry Lomb – co-founded Bausch & Lomb
- William H. Luden – developer of the menthol cough drop, the first ever, Luden's Menthol Cough Drops
- Peter Luger – steak restaurateur
- Abby Rockefeller Mauzé – philanthropist
- Oscar Mayer – meat entrepreneur
- F. L. Maytag – founded the Maytag Company
- George W. Merck – scientist and former president of Merck & Co.
- Adolph Ochs-Sulzberger – newspaper publisher and former owner of The New York Times and The Chattanooga Times (now the Chattanooga Times Free Press)
- Hermann Oelrichs – businessman, multimillionaire, and owner of Norddeutsche Lloyd shipping
- Fabian Pascal – consultant to large software vendors
- Charles Pfizer – founded the Pfizer Inc. pharmaceutical company
- John J. Raskob – builder of the Empire State Building
- George Remus – famous Cincinnati lawyer and bootlegger during the prohibition era
- Adolph Rickenbacher – created the electric guitar manufacturer, Rickenbacher Manufacturing Company
- William Rittenhouse – built the first paper mill in America
- David Rockefeller – banker, philanthropist, world statesman, and the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family
- John D. Rockefeller – industrialist and philanthropist
- John D. Rockefeller, Jr. – industrialist and philanthropist
- John D. Rockefeller III – industrialist and philanthropist
- Laurance Rockefeller – venture capitalist, financier, philanthropist and major conservationist
- John Augustus Roebling – civil engineer, one of the pioneers in the construction of suspension bridges
- Washington Augustus Roebling – civil engineer best known for his work on the Brooklyn Bridge
- Jim Rohr – chairman and CEO of PNC Financial Services Group (PNC Bank)
- August Schell – founded The August Schell Brewing Company in 1860, the second oldest family-owned brewery in America
- Jacob Schiff – banker and philanthropist
- Eric Schmidt – executive chairman and CEO of Google Inc. and a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc., and 136th-wealthiest person in the world in 2011
- Charles M. Schwab – steel magnate (Bethlehem Steel)
- Steve Schwarzman – billionaire, owner of Blackstone Group
- Isaac Singer – inventor, actor, and sewing machine entrepreneur
- Claus Spreckels – industrialist
- George Steinbrenner – late owner of the New York Yankees and entrepreneur.
- Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg – Steinway pianos manufacturer
- Henry William Stiegel – glassmaker and ironmaster and an active lay Lutheran and associate of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg
- Chris Strachwitz – founder and president of Arhoolie Records
- Levi Strauss – creator of the first company to manufacture blue jeans.
- Clement Studebaker – founded Studebaker, a wagon, carriage and car manufacturer
- Arthur Hays Sulzberger – publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961
- John Sutter – pioneer settler/colonizer
- Peter Thiel – co-founder of PayPal Inc. and the first outside investor in Facebook, Inc.
- Otto Timm – aircraft manufacturer
- Donald Trump – real estate developer
- William Utz – snack food entrepreneur
- Charles Von der Ahe – co-founder of the Vons Supermarket chain
- Wilfred Von der Ahe – co-founder of the Vons Supermarket chain
- The Warburg Family – bankers
- George Westinghouse – engineer and electricity pioneer
- Friedrich Weyerhäuser – timber mogul and founder of the Weyerhaeuser
- Francis Wolff – co-founder of Blue Note Records
- Rudolph Wurlitzer – musical instrument entrepreneur
- William Zeckendorf – real estate developer
- Mark Zuckerberg – co-founder of Facebook, Inc.
Read more about this topic: List Of German Americans