Steve Ballmer
Source of wealth: Microsoft
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Biography
Steve Ballmer is the high-energy former CEO of Microsoft, who led the company from 2000 to 2014.
He joined Microsoft in 1980 as employee No. 30 after dropping out of Stanford's MBA program. He first met Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates when the two were undergrads at Harvard.
Ballmer oversaw Microsoft after the first dot-com crash and through efforts to catch up to Google in search capabilities and Apple in mobile phones.
In 2014, the year he retired from Microsoft, he bought the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion; Forbes now values the team at $7.5 billion. He spent another $2 billion building a stadium.
Ballmer, who owned 4% of Microsoft stock when he retired, has held onto most of his stock and has said he's the company's largest individual shareholder.
He has ramped up his philanthropy since 2014; to date the Ballmers have given away more than $6.5 billion.
Perspective on their fortune
Gold
Everyday luxury
A Steve Ballmer's fortune is equivalent to 890 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.
A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.
Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3
Steve Ballmer could buy 237,279,077 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!
And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 42 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Steve Ballmer will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.
Health
The price of life
Let's compare Steve Ballmer's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country
Steve Ballmer could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 59.4 years.
But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country
At the other extreme, Steve Ballmer could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 26.3 years
Education
Buying the future
Lowest education spending
Steve Ballmer could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 38.8 years.
Highest education spending
But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Steve Ballmer could pay for it in full for 52.8 years.
Research
The monopoly of progress
Lowest research spending
Steve Ballmer could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 222.2 years.
Highest research spending
But even if we compare the total wealth of Steve Ballmer with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 5.0 years.
Financial Assets
Monthly wealth history
Fortune comparison
Historical data not available for comparison