How Steve Ballmer excelled at Microsoft and made a fortune
Advertiser Disclosure
We are an independent, advertising-supported comparison service. Our goal is to help you make smarter financial decisions by providing you with interactive tools and financial calculators, publishing original and objective content, by enabling you to conduct research and compare information for free - so that you can make financial decisions with confidence.
Bankrate has partnerships with issuers including, but not limited to, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi and Discover.
How We Make Money.
The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site, including, for example, the order in which they may appear within the listing categories. But this compensation does not influence the information we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you.
At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict
, this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here’s an explanation for
Editorial Integrity
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
How We Make Money
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Which bank should I choose?
Get personalized bank recommendations in 3 easy steps.
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $23.5 billion (as of May 2016)
Year of birth: 1956
Education: Harvard University, Stanford (dropout)
How Steve Ballmer’s net worth was built
Ballmer built much of his wealth when he took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2000. Though he left in 2014, he kept a 4% stake in the company, beating out Bill Gates as the largest individual shareholder.
Ballmer grew up in the Detroit area, where his father worked as a manager at the Ford Motor Co. Ballmer earned a scholarship to the Detroit Country Day School and became a National Merit Scholar in 1973. At Harvard University, he decided to gear his studies toward business. He also became the manager for Harvard’s football team and worked for the school’s newspaper and literary journal.
After graduating, Ballmer worked for Procter & Gamble before attending — and eventually dropping out of — Stanford’s business school in order to join Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980. In January 2000, Ballmer took over as CEO of Microsoft.
You can use Bankrate’s net worth calculator to see how you compare to Ballmer’s net worth.
What he’s up to now
Ballmer’s interests extend well beyond the land of tech. In 2014, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion — the largest NBA purchase on record. In addition, Ballmer and his wife devote a lot of time and money to philanthropy. They have donated $11 million to the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship in order to help disadvantaged students in health care and STEM fields of study. The couple have also contributed $50 million to the University of Oregon and an undisclosed amount to Harvard’s computer science department.
Accolades
In 2008, Ballmer was presented with the Champion of Youth Award by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for helping the organization establish Club Tech. In 2011, then- French President Nicolas Sarkozy honored Ballmer by making him a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Ballmer was the commencement speaker at the University of Washington in 2014, and the Los Angeles Police Foundation honored him in 2015 for his commitment to public safety in Los Angeles.
Share