With a net worth of $154 billion, Steve Ballmer is ranked right behind his former boss – Bill Gates – on the Bloomberg billionaires rankings.
According to Bloomberg’s billionaire rankings, in 2024, Steve Ballmer’s assets have increased by about $24 billion to $154 billion, bringing him to 7th place. Now, he is only one step away from Gates – at number 1. 6 with $157 billion – $3 billion, compared to $17 billion in summer 2023.
Steve Ballmer (right) and Bill Gates at Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting on November 14, 2006. At that time, Ballmer was CEO and Gates was Chairman of Microsoft. Photo: Bloomberg
Ballmer is richer than many big-name billionaires including Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($153 billion), Alphabet’s Sergey Brin ($148 billion), Warren Buffett ($135 billion), Michael Dell ($120 billion) and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (115 billion USD).
He joined Microsoft in 1980 as assistant to the President, although he had previously been a business manager. Initially, he negotiated a base salary of $50,000 plus 10% growth in the profits he generated, but when the profits became too much, he agreed to swap for a large equity stake, according to Forbes.
Gates’ trusted advisor rose to become CEO of Microsoft in 2000. According to legal filings, he retired in 2014 with 333 million shares or 4% of the shares.
Bloomberg assumes he kept most of those shares, bringing in more than $150 billion based on Microsoft’s stock price. He also has the ability to collect billions of dollars in dividends over the years.
Ballmer’s fortune has skyrocketed over the past year largely due to the artificial intelligence boom, driving up Microsoft’s stock price. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI – developer of ChatGPT chatbot – is expected to help the Windows maker surpass Google in Internet search.
According to Insider, Ballmer’s wealth is very different from the 10 richest people on the Bloomberg list. Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos and the rest got rich from stakes in the companies they founded or still run, while Ballmer is not the founder or current CEO of Microsoft.
If Ballmer surpasses Gates, who has donated large sums of money to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities, it would be a truly rare case of an employee becoming richer than his boss. me.
(Theo Insider)