The 25 Biggest Deals in Shark Tank History

Most of what happens on Shark Tank is small money. Across 869 deals, the sharks have committed about $253.7 million, and the typical check lands somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000. That is the rhythm of the show: a founder asks for a modest sum, haggles over a few points of equity, and walks out with a check that would barely register on a venture capitalist's radar.

Then there are the outliers. A handful of deals broke the format entirely, with sharks writing checks ten or twenty times the usual size. Looking at the biggest of them tells you less about the products than it does about how the sharks think when the numbers stop being television-friendly and start being real.

When One Shark Bets the Whole Table

The largest deal in the dataset is AirCar, where Robert Herjavec put up $5,000,000 for 50 percent of the company in Season 6. Pause on that equity split. Herjavec did not negotiate his way to a minority stake with upside. He took half the business outright, which means he valued AirCar at exactly twice his investment and wanted control on day one. That is not a passive bet. That is a buyout dressed up as a Shark Tank deal.

Herjavec shows up again at number two with SynDaver Labs, another Season 6 swing, this time $3,000,000 for 25 percent. Two of the three biggest checks in the data came from the same shark in the same season, which suggests less a pattern of caution than a willingness to go enormous when he believes the science is defensible. SynDaver makes synthetic human tissue, the kind of business where the moat is technical and the buyer is institutional. Herjavec, who built and sold a cybersecurity firm, tends to lean into companies where the value is in the engineering rather than the marketing.

The Strangest Deal on the List

Moki Doorstep is the one that should make you stop. Daymond John paid $3,000,000 for 100 percent of the company in Season 10. Read that again. He did not take a stake. He bought the entire thing. The founders walked away with three million dollars and no equity, and Daymond walked away owning a car door step in full.

That structure is almost unheard of on the show, where the entire premise is sharks taking a piece and leaving founders to keep building. A full acquisition flips the relationship. It means Daymond saw a product simple enough to operate without the people who invented it, and he was willing to pay a premium to own all the upside instead of splitting it. Whether that was a steal or an overpay depends on numbers the show never tells you, but the willingness to write that check for total control says something about how he reads commodity products with mass appeal.

The Equity Tells the Real Story

Look down the rest of the list and a split emerges. Kevin O'Leary put $2,500,000 into Zipz, the single-serve wine company, for only 10 percent in Season 6. Lori Greiner and Kevin O'Leary together backed Vengo at $2,000,000 for 10 percent in Season 7. These are big checks paired with small slices, which is the language of a shark who believes the company is already worth a lot and just needs fuel.

Contrast that with the chunkier stakes. Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner split D Best Products for $2,350,000 at 20 percent in Season 8. Mark Cuban alone took 20 percent of Ten Thirty One Productions for $2,000,000 in Season 5, and 25 percent of Rugged Maniac for $1,750,000. The bigger the equity percentage attached to a seven-figure check, the more the shark is treating it like an ownership play rather than a growth loan. A 10 percent stake on millions implies a valuation north of $20 million walking in the door. A 25 percent stake on a smaller check implies the shark thinks the business is cheaper and wants more of it.

The last entry worth flagging is X Craft, the drone company that pulled in all five sharks at once for $1,500,000 and 25 percent in Season 7. A full-panel deal is its own animal. When every shark wants in, none of them gets to dictate terms, and the founder ends up with a board full of competitors who agreed on exactly one thing: that they could not afford to let this one walk. Against 869 deals and an average check well under $300,000, these eleven pitches are the rare moments when the Tank stopped being a TV segment and started looking like an actual investment committee with real money on the line.

1. 1
   AirCar

   Season 6 · Robert Herjavec

   $5,000,000

   for 50% · $10M valuation

2. 2
   SynDaver Labs

   Season 6 · Robert Herjavec

   $3,000,000

   for 25% · $12M valuation

3. 3
   Moki Doorstep

   Season 10 · Daymond John

   $3,000,000

   for 100% · $3M valuation

4. 4
   Zipz

   Season 6 · Kevin O'Leary

   $2,500,000

   for 10% · $25M valuation

5. 5
   D Best Products

   Season 8 · Mark Cuban + Lori Greiner

   $2,350,000

   for 20% · $1.8M valuation

6. 6
   Ten Thirty One Productions

   Season 5 · Mark Cuban

   $2,000,000

   for 20% · $10M valuation

7. 7
   Vengo

   Season 7 · Lori Greiner + Kevin O'Leary

   $2,000,000

   for 10% · $20M valuation

8. 8
   Fizzics

   Season 8 · Mark Cuban + Lori Greiner

   $2,000,000

   for 16.7% · $12.0M valuation

9. 9
   Rugged Maniac

   Season 5 · Mark Cuban

   $1,750,000

   for 25% · $7M valuation

10. 10
    X Craft

    Season 7 · Mark Cuban + Lori Greiner + Robert Herjavec + Daymond John + Kevin O'Leary

    $1,500,000

    for 25% · $6M valuation

11. 11
    Sworkit

    Season 7 · Mark Cuban

    $1,500,000

    for 10% · $15M valuation

12. 12
    Beyond Sushi

    Season 10 · Lori Greiner + Matt Higgins

    $1,500,000

    for 45% · $3.3M valuation

13. 13
    Robo Burger

    Season 15 · Kevin O'Leary + Michael Rubin

    $1,500,000

    for 9% · $16.7M valuation

14. 14
    Trunkster

    Season 7 · Mark Cuban + Lori Greiner

    $1,400,000

    for 5% · $28M valuation

15. 15
    HyConn

    Season 2 · Mark Cuban

    $1,250,000

    for 100% · $1.3M valuation

16. 16
    Jackson's Honest

    Season 9 · Rohan Oza

    $1,250,000

    for 15% · $8.3M valuation

17. 17
    The Red Dress Boutique

    Season 6 · Mark Cuban + Robert Herjavec

    $1,200,000

    for 20% · $6M valuation

18. 18
    Plunge

    Season 13 · Robert Herjavec

    $1,200,000

    for 12% · $10M valuation

19. 19
    Clean Green Golf Balls

    Season 17 · Kevin O'Leary + Robert Herjavec

    $1,050,000

    for 15% · $7M valuation

20. 20
    How Do You Roll?

    Season 4 · Kevin O'Leary

    $1,000,000

    for 20% · $5M valuation

21. 21
    Breathometer

    Season 5 · Mark Cuban + Lori Greiner + Robert Herjavec + Daymond John + Kevin O'Leary

    $1,000,000

    for 30% · $3.3M valuation

22. 22
    BeatBox Beverages

    Season 6 · Mark Cuban

    $1,000,000

    for 33% · $3.0M valuation

23. 23
    Polar Pro

    Season 7 · Mark Cuban + Robert Herjavec

    $1,000,000

    for 20% · $5M valuation

24. 24
    EverlyWell

    Season 9 · Lori Greiner

    $1,000,000

    for 5% · $20M valuation

25. 25
    Everytable

    Season 9 · Rohan Oza

    $1,000,000

    for 10% · $10M valuation

Want the terms behind any of these? Every product page on the index has the full term sheet, the ask, the counter, and what the company was actually worth when the handshake happened.