Steve Ballmer

His tenure and legacy as Microsoft CEO has received mixed reception, with the company tripling sales and doubling profits, but losing its market dominance and missing out on 21st-century technology trends such as the ascendance of smartphones in the form of iPhone and Android.

Net Worth

Steve Ballmer has a net worth of $22.2 billion.

Philanthropic Works

In 1994, Ballmer and Bill Gates jointly donated $10 million to Harvard University's computer science department.

In 2014, Ballmer again donated money to Harvard University's computer science department to enable it to hire new faculty.

In 2014, Ballmer donated $50 million to the University of Oregon for the purpose of scholarships, public health research and advocacy, and external branding/communications.

Awards & Achievements

Steve Ballmer was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in Paris by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Personal Life & Legacy

He married Connie Snyder in 1990. They have three sons.

Both Ballmer and his wife are active on the philanthropic front and were reported to have donated $50 million to the University of Oregon in 2014.

In August 2013 Ballmer announced that he would be stepping down as CEO within a year, and he was succeeded by Satya Nadella in February 2014. Later that year Ballmer purchased the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA.

In 2011 Ballmer helped arrange the $8.5 billion acquisition of the Internet communication company Skype. It was the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history and placed the company in competition with Apple’s video chat service FaceTime and Google’s Internet communication service Voice.

Gates, in order to concentrate on his philanthropic interests, withdrew from daily obligations at Microsoft in 2008, making Ballmer even more prominent as the public face of Microsoft. In 2009 the company expanded into the search engine market, releasing Bing. Later that year Microsoft brokered a deal with Internet portal site Yahoo! in which Yahoo! would use Bing for its Web site and handle premium advertisements for Microsoft’s Web site.

The Xbox struggled to make consistent profits, however, and the Zune players failed to challenge the market dominance of Apple’s iPod. Ballmer faced another challenge in 2007, when Microsoft’s operating system Vista was greeted with mixed reviews.

In 1998 Ballmer became president of Microsoft, and two years later he became the company’s CEO, after Gates stepped down from that position to become chairman. Under Ballmer’s leadership, Microsoft diversified its focus through new products such as the electronic game console system Xbox, first released in 2001, and the Zune family of portable media players introduced in 2006.