Ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer started as Bill Gates' assistant. Now he's worth $158 billion and owns an NBA team. Here's how he spends his fortune.
Microsoft
It's not often an employee becomes richer than a company's founder, but that's just what happened this week — at least briefly — with Bill Gates and his former assistant.
Steve Ballmer's wealth leapfrogged that of Gates, his former boss and Microsoft's cofounder. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index showed Ballmer's pulling ahead was short-lived, though: The men are now both worth $158 billion, as of late Friday, according to the index, which is sure to move again as the markets fluctuate.
Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 as the company's first business manager and climbed the ranks to become CEO in 2000, succeeding Gates in the position. Ballmer remained CEO until 2014, when he passed the baton to Satya Nadella.
Here's a look at how Ballmer spends his vast fortune:
AP
Ballmer is one of the world's wealthiest sports team owners.
He bought the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team in 2014, the same year he stepped down as Microsoft's CEO. He paid $2 billion, a record for the sale of a professional basketball team at the time.
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Ballmer says he's footing the bill to build the most expensive arena in the NBA. The Intuit Dome, which is still under construction in Inglewood, California, just outside Los Angeles, is expected to cost $2 billion.
(Ballmer added that his obsession with the arena is "toilets, toilets, toilets." The 17,500-seat arena will have 1,160 toilets and urinals, Bloomberg reported.)
AP/Evan Vucci
Over the years, Ballmer has snapped up multiple homes in Washington state, where Microsoft is headquartered.
In 2019, he and his wife, Connie Ballmer, with whom he shares three children, paid $9.8 million to buy the home adjacent to their existing home in Hunts Point.
The couple began buying property on Whidbey Island in Washington in 2005.
REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
In 2017, Ballmer launched USAFacts.org, whose website says it "makes government data accessible and understandable."
He told The New York Times that year that he'd spent upward of $10 million on USA Facts in direct funding and grants, and that it could cost up to $5 million a year to sustain.
Asa Mathat / Vox Media
The Ballmer family office funds organizations with the goal of "improving economic mobility and opportunity for children and families in the United States," according to its website.
Through the couple's philanthropic arm, for example, they've pledged $425 million to the University of Oregon for an institute for children's mental and behavioral health.
