[1] As of 2025, his net worth was estimated at US$18.5 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index[2] and was regarded as the richest person in North Carolina as of April 2023.

[10][11] Goodnight returned to North Carolina State University after working on the Apollo project, where he earned a PhD in statistics and was a faculty member from 1972 to 1976.

[7] Goodnight joined another faculty member at North Carolina State in a research project to create a general purpose statistical analysis system (the original meaning of the name SAS) for analyzing agricultural data.

Goodnight along with fellow faculty member Anthony James Barr became project leaders for the development of the early version of SAS.

[21][22] HSM Global described Goodnight's leadership style in a framework of three pillars: "help employees do their best work by keeping them intellectually challenged and by removing distractions; make managers responsible for sparking creativity; eliminate arbitrary distinctions between 'suits' and 'creatives'; engage customers as creative partners to help deliver superior products.

[30] Goodnight met his wife, Ann, while he was a senior at North Carolina State University and she was attending Meredith College.

The display has been described as "a testament to his love of unique pieces of earth, from petrified dinosaur eggs, to impressive, mosaic chunks of native granite, to large, glassy meteorites.

A selection of pieces are displayed in the Betsy M. Bennett Bridge to Discovery, which links the museum to its Nature Research Center.

[32] In April 2023, Goodnight's net worth was estimated at US$7.4 billion, making him the richest person in North Carolina, ahead of Epic Games' Tim Sweeney.

[36] He has advocated for increased funding for STEM education in the United States to prevent brain-drain and the outsourcing of research and technology jobs to other countries.

[40] Their endowments have also created the Goodnight Doctoral Fellowship, 28 named faculty positions, and a deanship at North Carolina State.

[43] In 2023, the Goodnight Distinguished Professorship in Early Literacy at Western Carolina University was established with a $1.5 million endowment from the foundation.

He has invested heavily in real estate in Cary, which - in addition to tax revenue generated by SAS and the attraction of thousands of employees - has contributed to the town's growth since the 1970s.