Who Replaced Mark Cuban on Shark Tank?

Last updated July 8, 2026. This is a living page, refreshed as ABC confirms more details.

For fifteen seasons Mark Cuban was the loudest voice and the biggest checkbook in the Tank. Then he left, and the obvious question followed: who replaced him? The honest answer is that no single shark did. ABC handled Cuban's exit in two stages, first with a rotating cast of guests, then by promoting two of those guests to permanent seats.

It is one of the most common questions fans have asked since the news broke, and the confusion is fair, because the show handled it in a way no single headline captures. Here is how the seat that Cuban held for so long actually got filled, and why the show may have come out stronger for it.

Why Cuban Left

Mark Cuban announced that Season 16 would be his last, and he followed through. It capped a run of fifteen seasons in which he became the show's most active investor by a wide margin, the shark most likely to go all in fast when a product caught him. He joined back in Season 2, which is why his departure carried real weight: Season 17 was the first season since Season 2 to air without him at the desk.

His reasons were the ones you would expect from someone with a full plate: family, other businesses, and a sense that fifteen seasons was enough. Whatever the motivation, it left the producers with a genuine hole to fill, both in dealmaking volume and in on-screen energy.

The hole was real. Cuban was not just any shark. He wrote more checks than anyone at the table and often drove the pace of a negotiation single-handedly, pushing the other sharks to move faster or drop out. Replacing that presence was never going to be as simple as sliding one new investor into an empty chair, which is why the show took a full season to work it out.

Season 17: A Rotation, Not a Replacement

Rather than hand the chair to one person, Season 17 rotated a group of guest sharks through it. The gamble paid off. The season closed on April 22, 2026 with the highest deal rate in the show's history: of 72 companies that pitched across eighteen episodes, 54 walked out with a deal, a 75 percent success rate, and the sharks committed about $14.7 million on air. The show proved it could thrive without its biggest spender.

The seat did not belong to one person. Across the eighteen episodes, nine different guest sharks cycled through the Tank, and together they accounted for 28 deal participations worth close to $5.9 million. Spreading Cuban's chair across a rotating cast gave the show fresh faces every few weeks and let the producers audition several long-term candidates in real time.

One guest stood out. Kendra Scott led all Season 17 guests with 5 deals and $970K invested. Her biggest swing was the season opener, $500K for 10 percent of Double Soul, the eco-friendly sock brand co-founded with Pete Davidson. That kind of decisive dealmaking is exactly what turned a temporary guest run into something more permanent.

Season 18: Two New Permanent Sharks

For Season 18, ABC made the rotation official by naming two former guests as permanent sharks. Kendra Scott, on the strength of that Season 17 run, earns a full-time seat. Alongside her, venture capitalist Rashaun Williams also steps up to a regular chair after appearing as a guest since 2024.

Williams brings a background the panel did not really have before. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, he graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College in 2001 and started his career at Goldman Sachs before spending two decades on Wall Street. He later became a general partner in the MVP All-Star Fund and has reported more than 170 investments with over 50 exits, including early bets on Coinbase, Robinhood, Dropbox, and Lyft. Where Cuban was a hands-on operator turned billionaire, Williams is a career investor, which changes the flavor of the questions founders now face.

So the real answer to who replaced Mark Cuban is: a season-long rotation first, then Kendra Scott and Rashaun Williams as the long-term fix. Add returning veteran Daniel Lubetzky in a permanent seat and a guest roster led by MrBeast, and the post-Cuban Tank looks less like a show missing its star and more like one that used the opening to get deeper. This page is updated as the Season 18 lineup is confirmed.