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.
In fact, his net worth has increased by nearly 600% in the decade since he stepped down from the helm of one of the world’s largest software companies.
But just how did Bill Gates’ successor, who was hired in 1980 with a salary of $50,000, grow his wealth so substantially, and what is he worth now?
Here’s everything you need to know about Ballmer’s wealth, career at Microsoft, stock ownership, and current ventures in philanthropy, sports, and beyond.
What is Steve Ballmer’s net worth?
Forbes, usually considered one of the more accurate sources for billionaire executives’ net worths, listed Ballmer's wealth at around $121 billion, which would make him the 10th-richest individual on earth at the time of publication — and $15 billion richer than former colleague and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — as of this article’s last update.
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Here’s how the two former Microsoft CEOs’ net worths have compared over the last 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): $20.3 billion (at time of death in 2018)
- Satya Nadella (current CEO): $1.4 billion
Ballmer’s career at Microsoft
Steve Ballmer, the son of two Jewish European immigrants to the United States, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and attended a private college-prep school before 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, in fact — with a double major in mathematics and economics.
After briefly exploring some corporate and creative work, Ballmer went on to pursue an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, while Gates and co-founder Paul Allen were busy trying to get Microsoft off the ground. In 1980, Ballmer left the program to join Microsoft as the company’s 30th (or 24th, depending on who you ask) employee. His work was essentially that of a business manager.
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Ballmer’s starting compensation included an annual salary of $50,000 plus 10% of all profit growth he could generate. However, within a year or so, as Microsoft continued to grow, it became evident that this payment model wasn’t sustainable, so the profit-sharing was abandoned and Ballmer instead received 8% equity in the company. (By the time he would become CEO in 2000, Balmer’s stake in Microsoft was worth close to $2 billion.)
Soon after joining the company, Ballmer helped secure a deal with IBM for Microsoft to produce software used in the company’s personal computers. Over the course of his first two decades, Ballmer headed divisions like operations, operating systems development, and sales. He helped manage crucial aspects of the company’s strategy up to and through the iconic release of Microsoft Office in 1989 as well as the introduction of Windows 95, which made personal computers much more accessible to average users and is widely considered to be the first modern operating system.
Was Steve Ballmer a good CEO?
The turn of the millennium was a time of major organizational change for Microsoft. Co-founder Paul Allen resigned due to 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, tapping his college buddy Ballmer to replace him as CEO.
His 14 years as Microsoft’s CEO left him with a mixed reputation. On one hand, Microsoft continued to perform very well financially. In fact, the company more than tripled its revenue and doubled its profits during Ballmer’s tenure as CEO, according to a biography page on Microsoft’s website archived from 2013.
On the other hand, many have criticized Microsoft’s performance during Ballmer’s reign, citing a lack of innovation, particularly 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, despite the dot-com crash that spelled the end of many tech and software companies at the time.
Ballmer oversaw the release of Windows XP, a popular operating system that users loved, as well as the Xbox, which quickly became a leader in the gaming console market — but subsequent Microsoft efforts weren’t received nearly as well.
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Windows Vista, the operating system that succeeded XP, was widely considered a disaster, and as Apple’s smartphones and iOS gained market share, Microsoft’s offerings floundered. Microsoft’s Surface tablets weren’t very well received either, and Apple’s iPads left them in the dust.
By 2012, Hedge fund manager David Einhorn publicly called for Ballmer to step down, while Forbes described him as “the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company" claiming that he had mismanaged Microsoft “out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets)."
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Does Ballmer still own Microsoft stock?
In 2003, shortly into his tenure as CEO, Ballmer sold half of his then 8% stake in Microsoft, leaving him with 4% of the company’s outstanding shares. Most sources assume he still has around that much.
As of Early October 2024, Microsoft has about 7,433,000,000 shares outstanding, meaning Ballmer likely possesses around 297,320,000 shares, which would be worth about $123.3 billion — close to Forbes’ estimate of his net worth.
What does Steve Ballmer do now?
Ballmer may be retired from Microsoft, but he’s still busy with several other projects, including a sports franchise, a philanthropic investment company, and a government data transparency nonprofit.
The LA Clippers
Ballmer purchased the NBA basketball team, the LA Clippers, the same year he retired from Microsoft for around $2 billion. In October of 2023, Forbes estimated the franchise’s value at around $4.6 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 was (and still is) a major shareholder in Microsoft.
In 2021, Ballmer and Co. broke ground on a new arena for the Team in Inglewood, California, close to the existing Kia Forum arena. The new arena, dubbed the Intuit Dome, opened in 2024, and the first Clippers game of the 2024–2025 season is expected 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 support to organizations that work to reduce economic inequities and promote criminal justice reform, among other efforts.
The company, which is structured as an LLC rather than a 501(c)3 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 called USAFacts with the goal of demystifying government data and making it accessible to everyday 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 topics like government spending, healthcare, border and immigration issues, shootings, education, and other hot political topics.
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)
- Spouse: 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)
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