Steve Ballmer’s net worth: The former Microsoft CEO’s wealth in 2024

Steve Ballmer, who served as Microsoft’s CEO from 2000 to 2014, has seen his wealth grow substantially over the course of his career — and even more substantially since his 2014 retirement.

Surely, his net worth has increased by nearly 600% in the decade since he stepped down from the helm of one in the complete sphere’s largest software companies.

But just how did Bill Gates’ successor, who turn into hired in 1980 with a salary of $50,000, grow his wealth so substantially, and what's he worth now? Here’s the total lot you know about Ballmer’s wealth, career at Microsoft, stock ownership, and current ventures in philanthropy, sports, and beyond.

What's Steve Ballmer’s net worth?

As of mid-October, 2024, Bloomberg listed Ballmer’s net worth at $a hundred forty five billion (with a self belief rating of two out of 5).

Forbes, in your entire thought about one in the complete more accurate sources for billionaire executives’ net worths, listed his wealth substantially lower, at around $121 billion, which would make him the Tenth-richest individual on this planet on the time of publication — and $15 billion richer than former colleague and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — as of this text’s last update.

Do not miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free on each day basis newsletter

Here’s how the 2 former Microsoft CEOs’ net worths have compared over the past decade or so:

How does Ballmer’s wealth compare to that of other Microsoft execs?

Steve Ballmer is, as of early October 2024, the wealthiest current or former Microsoft executive:

• Steve Ballmer (former CEO): $121 billion
• Bill Gates (co-founder, former CEO): $106 billion
• Paul Allen (co-founder): $20.three billion (at time of death in 2018)
• Satya Nadella (current CEO): $1.four billion

Ballmer’s career at Microsoft

Steve Ballmer, the son of two Jewish European immigrants to the US, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and attended a deepest college-prep school earlier than attending Harvard, where he studied mathematics alongside fellow undergraduate and future Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. While Gates never graduated from the esteemed Ivy League, Ballmer did — magna cum laude, truly — with a double major in mathematics and economics.

After in short exploring some corporate and inventive work, Ballmer went on to pursue an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, while Gates and co-founder Paul Allen were busy attempting to get Microsoft off the ground. In 1980, Ballmer left this system to register for Microsoft because the company’s thirtieth (or twenty fourth, having a look on who you ask) employee. His work turn into truly that of a business manager.

Related: Tim Cook's net worth: How an even deal the Apple CEO's stock is worth

Ballmer’s starting compensation included an annual salary of $50,000 plus 10% of all profit growth he may perhaps generate. Nevertheless, within a year or so, as Microsoft continued to grow, it changed into evident that this payment model wasn’t sustainable, so the profit-sharing turn into abandoned and Ballmer instead received eight% equity in the company. (By the point he would change into CEO in 2000, Balmer’s stake in Microsoft turn into worth with regards to $2 billion.)

Soon after joining the company, Ballmer helped secure a address IBM for Microsoft to produce software utilized in the company’s personal computers. Over the course of his first twenty years, Ballmer headed divisions like operations, operating systems development, and sales. He helped handle crucial aspects of the company’s strategy up to and thru the iconic liberate of Microsoft Workplace in 1989 to boot because the introduction of Windows ninety five, which made personal computers an even deal more on hand to average users and is widely thought about to be the first modern operating system.

Became Steve Ballmer a perfect CEO?

The turn of the millennium turn right into a time of change for Microsoft. Co-founder Paul Allen resigned on account of a long-term struggle with lymphoma, while Gates moved out of the CEO role but remained active as chief software architect and chairman of the board. This is when Ballmer replaced his college buddy as CEO.

His 14 years as Microsoft’s CEO left him with a mixed reputation. On one hand, the company continued to perform well financially. Surely, the company more than tripled its revenue and doubled its profits at some point of Ballmer’s tenure as CEO, per a biography page on Microsoft’s website archived from 2013.

Nevertheless, many have criticized Microsoft’s performance at some point of Ballmer’s reign, citing a lack of innovation, specially in its product offerings, at a time when its competitors — like Apple, with iTunes, the iPhone, and later, the iPad — were thinking outside the box.

The first few years of Ballmer’s stint as CEO did see some commercial and cultural successes, in spite of the dot-com crash that spelled the tip of many tech and software companies on the time.

Ballmer oversaw the discharge of Windows XP, a most well-liked operating system that users loved, to boot because the Xbox, which quickly changed right into a pacesetter in the gaming console market — but subsequent Microsoft efforts weren’t received nearly to boot.

More executive net worth:

• Steve Jobs' net worth: How rich the late Apple founder can have been
• New Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol's net worth & compensation package
• Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus’s net worth: From fired CEO to entrepreneur

Windows Vista, the operating system that succeeded XP, turn into widely thought about a disaster, and as Apple’s smartphones and iOS gained market share, Microsoft’s offerings floundered. Microsoft’s Surface tablets weren’t okay received either, and Apple’s iPad’s left them in the dust.

By 2012, Hedge fund manager David Einhorn publicly in most cases often often called for Ballmer to step down, while Forbes described him as “the worst CEO of a giant publicly traded American company" claiming that he had mismanaged Microsoft “out of a giant selection of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets)."

Related: Steve Wozniak’s net worth: The Apple cofounder’s wealth in 2024

Does Ballmer still own Microsoft stock?

In 2003, shortly into his tenure as CEO, Ballmer sold 0.5 of his then-eight% stake in Microsoft, leaving him with four% of the company’s outstanding shares. Most sources assume he still has around that an even deal.

As of Early October, Microsoft has about 7,433,000,000 shares outstanding, which means Ballmer likely possesses around 297,320,000 shares, which may be worth about $123.three billion — with regards to Forbes’ estimate of his net worth.

What does Steve Ballmer do now?

Ballmer may maybe be retired from Microsoft, but he’s still busy with a couple of other projects, including a sports franchise, an investment company, and a data transparency nonprofit.

The LA Clippers

Ballmer purchased the NBA basketball team the LA Clippers the identical year he retired from Microsoft for around $2 billion. In October of 2023, Forbes estimated the franchise’s value at around $four.6 billion.

In 2014, shortly after Ballmer’s acquisition of the team, SB Nation reported that Ballmer planned to ban the team and other members of the Clippers franchise from using iPhones, iPads, and other products that weren’t Microsoft Windows friendly — ostensibly because he turn into (and still is) a prime shareholder in Microsoft.

In 2021, Ballmer and Co. broke ground on a new arena for the Team in Inglewood, California, with regards to the prevailing Kia Forum arena. The fresh arena, dubbed the Intuit Dome, opened in 2024, and the first Clippers game of the 2024–2025 season is anticipated to occur there in October 2024.

Ballmer Group

The year after his retirement, Ballmer founded the eponymous Ballmer Group, a philanthropic investment company, with his wife Connie. The company provides financial improve to organizations that work to cut back economic inequities and promote criminal justice reform, among other efforts.

The company, which is structured as an LLC in preference to a 501(c)three nonprofit, has invested in City Year, the American Heart Association, Planned Parenthood, and public educational institutions in the Pacific Northwest, including the University of Oregon and the University of Washington.

USAFacts

About three years after retiring from Microsoft, Ballmer launched a nonprofit in most cases often often called USAFacts with the goal of demystifying government data and making it on hand to each day Americans from a non-partisan perspective.

The organization pulls data from hundreds of government agencies and databases and produces explanatory video reports that explain what Americans can glean from government statistics as they relate to issues like government spending, healthcare, border and immigration issues, shootings, education, and other hot political issues.

Fast facts about Steve Ballmer

• Born: Steven Anthony Ballmer — March 24, 1956
• Tenure at Microsoft: About 33 years (1980–2014)
• Tenure as Microsoft CEO: About 14 years (2000–2014)
• Significant other: Connie Ballmer
• Children: Sam, Peter, and Aaron Ballmer
• Undergraduate education: BA in mathematics and economics, Harvard University|
• Graduate education: Stanford University Graduate School of Business (Unfinished; 1979–1980)

Related: The ten best investing books, per our stock market pros