Steve Jobs Net Worth

From the early 1970s to the 1980s, the co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs played a main role as one of the pioneers of the personal computer revolution, along with Steven Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, whose primary roles were designing and innovating early Apple products—Apple I, Apple II, and the Macintosh.

In 1985, Steve Jobs was forced out by his own company, which he co-founded, due to internal conflict. Within that same year, Job created new companies—NeXT, a technology company specializing in computer workstations, and Pixar, a computer animation studio. NeXT was not successful as a business, but it served as a vehicle for technical innovation, it was deemed highly successful. On the other hand, Pixar found incredible success in the film industry.

In 1997, Apple Inc. was on the verge of bankruptcy, Jobs was invited back to take charge. Steve Jobs revamped the company’s directional structure, attempted to revive the company to its glory day by innovating its existing product (Macintosh), and introduced new product lines. Zen Buddhism influenced the aesthetical product designs by Jobs as a student and practitioner. His sense of intuition was influenced by a Zen master and other spiritual people he came into contact with. 

Even though Steve Jobs was a highly successful entrepreneur, his personal life was complicated. He was given up for adoption after birth and only found out he had a biological sister several decades later. Some medical experts stated that Jobs’ pancreatic cancer is treatable and curable, but his faith in alternative medicine likely took his life earlier than it should be.

What is Steve Jobs’ Net Worth?

Steve Jobs’s revolutionary vision and innovation made the tech giant Apple a household name and the world’s most valuable company. In 2018, Apple broke the record to become the first company to record a $1 trillion market capitalization. In August 2020, it has a market cap of $2.723 trillion.

Most of Job’s income comes from two primary sources: Apple and Disney. But since his return to Apple, his ownership of Apple is microscopic compared to Disney. At the time of his death in 2011, Steve Jobs’ net worth was approximately $10.5 billion. When Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, his Walt Disney and Apple Inc. shares were transferred to Steven P. Jobs Trust, led by his wife of 20 years, Laurene Powell.  Before his death, Steve Jobs stipulated that most of his wealth will not be left to his children.

Before his death, Steve Jobs had approximately 7% ownership of Disney stock, making him The Walt Disney Company’s largest single shareholder. Based on Disney’s current value, Jobs’ stake would now be worth nearly $22 billion. Steve jobs had 0.6% shares of Apple by the end of 2011, around $ 2 billion.

In 2007, Laurene Jobs sold nearly half of Disney shares, or approximately $7 billion. She’s currently making around $280 million in dividends from both companies.

Jobs had an 11% stake in Apple after being ousted from the company in 1985, he sold all of his shares but one share to receive an annual report. The estimated value of those shares would be around $300 billion if Steve Jobs retained those shares.

Who is Steve Jobs?

Steven Paul Jobs is an entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955. His biological father, Abdulfattah ‘John’ Jandali, is an Arab Muslim from Syria who was also a student activist when he studied at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. His biological mother, Joanne Schieble, is an American of German and Swiss descent. They met at the University of Wisconsin while Jandali pursues a Ph.D., and Schieble was a student in his class. Scheible’s father was strongly against marriage and threatened to disown her because of Jandali’s religion.

Joanne Schieble secretly moved to San Francisco to give birth with the plan to give her baby for adoption. When the first selected couple changed their mind. When Clara and Paul Jobs seek to adopt Scheible’s baby, she refused to sign the adaption papers as the couple lack wealth and college education. Schieble only consented when Clara and Paul promised to pay for his college education. Clara Jobs had an ectopic pregnancy, which was the primary reason they turned to adoption.

Childhood

Paul Jobs was a Coast Guard mechanic; after he left his job, he married Clara in 1946. In 1957, the couple adopted another child, Patricia. At a later stage of Steve Jobs’s life, he stated he doesn’t get along with his adopted sister. In 1959, the Jobs family moved to Monta Loma in Mountain View, California. Paul tried to share his skills and trade as a mechanic with his son; though Steve enjoyed being around his dad his passion was elsewhere. By the age of 10, Steve was deeply involved in electronics.

During his childhood, Jobs had difficulty making friends his own age and was described as a loner. He also had great difficulty in a traditional classroom setting—he often caused trouble, defied authority figures, and was suspended a few times. Jobs skipped the 5th grade and transferred to the 6th grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View. At his new school, Jobs was socially awkward, had no friends, and was often bullied. When he was in the 7th grade, His parents agreed to relocate Jobs to a new school after Jobs gave them an ultimatum that he would drop out of school otherwise. In 1967, his parents scrapped all their savings to buy a new home in Cupertino School District, Cupertino, California. In 1968, Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard gave Jobs a summer job from his cold-called to ask Hewlett for parts for an electronics project.

In 1968, Jobs attended Homestead High School in Los Alto, where Jobs met his then-girlfriend and the mother of his first child, Chrisann Brennan. His school friend, Bill Fernandez, who later became the first Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) employee as a user-interface architect and innovator, introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak. Jobs regularly visited Wozniak when he attended the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Around that time, Wozniak showed Jobs his design on what he called a blue box, an inexpensive digital device that can be used to manipulate phone networks for free long-distance calls. Jobs turned this into a business idea and teamed up with Wozniak to produce in quantity so be sold at a profit. The experience instilled Jobs’s business mindset and to further pursue areas in electronics.

In 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after just one semester without his parents knowing. He saw it as a waste of his parents’ money as it didn’t benefit him educationally. Instead, Jobs pursued creative classes, including a calligraphy course, while trying to survive like a hobo.

Pre-Apple

In 1974, Jobs returned to live with his parents and was hired by a video game developer Atari, Inc. as a technician. In mid-1974, Jobs traveled to India for seven months to seek spiritual enlightenment. After returning to the U.S., he and his girlfriend, Brennan, became practitioners of Zen Buddhism through the Zen master Kōbun Chino Otogawa. While living in his parent’s backyard toolshed, which he turned into a living space, in mid-1975, Jobs was assigned by Attari to create a circuit board for an arcade video game. Jobs didn’t have the skills nor experience in this area; Wozniak singlehandedly helped Jobs to develop a circuit board eliminating about 50 chips from the machine, thereby making the same compact. Jobs received a very impressive paycheck of $5,000 of which Wozniak only received a mere $350 even though the initial agreement was a 50/50 split.

The Inception of Apple

In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer, the name was inspired by Jobs’ time spent at an apple orchard. Jobs used his bedroom as an office and workspace and later switched to a garage. Jobs and Wozniak had to sell their assets, so they can mass-produce circuit boards for Apple I—Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator, and Jobs sold his Volkswagen van.

Later that year, the computer retailer Paul Terrell purchased 50 fully assembled Apple I units for $500 each. In total, 200 Apple I was sold. That year, they received a $60,000 investment from the first angel investor of Apple, Mike Markkula. In 1977, Apple II was introduced, and it became one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products throughout the globe. In 1987, Jobs’ net worth was over $1 million.

Apple

Apple went public in 1980, and Steve Jobs’ net worth grew to $250 million at just 25 years of age. From $175,000 in revenues in 1977 to $117 million in sales in 1980, Apple is a force to be reckoned with.

Even though Jobs was obsessed with Apple Lisa, its development was unsuccessful. In 1984 the breakthrough Macintosh was introduced, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI.  During this time, Apple placed a profoundly powerful ad during a Super Bowl TV commercial which ended with the words: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” The audience was enthusiastic about the Macintosh at Apple’s annual shareholder’s meeting. It was widely acclaimed by the media and had great initial sales, but due to its low performance and limited range of available software, the sales sharply dropped in the second half of 1984.

In 1985, due to internal conflict among board members, and the difference of opinion between him and the company’s CEO John Sculley, Steve Jobs resigned from his founded company.

NeXT and Pixar

That same year, Jobs founded NeXT, a technology company specializing in computer workstations. Its first released product in 1990, NeXT workstations, was too expensive for normal businesses to afford, priced at $9,999. It eventually turned a profit after nine eight years in operation in 1994 for a profit of $1.03 million. Apple eventually acquired the company in 1997.

In 1986, Jobs invested $10 million into Pixar, an animation studio. The company worked together with Disney to produce animated films. The 1995 Toy Story brought huge financial success and was universally acclaimed. Pixar went on to produce numerous more successfully animated films, such as Finding Nemo (2003), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and The Incredibles (2004).

In 2006, Disney purchased Pixar in form of stock worth $7.4 billion, making Jobs the largest single shareholder of Disney with 7% ownership.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $427 million; the following year, Jobs became de facto CEO of the troubled Apple. Apple Inc., at that time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Under Jobs’s guidance, he made a few radical changes to Apple’s internal structure by terminating a few major existing projects and changes in its direction in the marketplace. As a result, a whole new line of products was introduced—the Think Different ad campaign led to the Apple Store, iMac, iPad, iPod, iPhone, and iTunes. The sales of their new products steeply increased, and whenever a version of Apple’s existing product or new product is introduced, consumers became ever more hooked and excited.   

In 1998, a new version of Apple Computer’s Macintosh was introduced to the world, the Apple iMac with a completely new operating system, Unix operating system, which was developed and marketed by Apple. In 2000, Jobs became the permanent CEO of Apple. In 2001, Apple attempted to break into the music market by introducing the iPod, iTunes digital music software, and iTunes Store. Not only did Apple successfully penetrate the music market, but it completely dominated its competitors.

In 2007 came the iPhone; from that moment onwards, the smartphone revolutionized the way we operate a phone and undeniably became an attachment to most people every day lives. The first iPhone has a multi-touch display, mobile browser, and in-built iPod. The release of the iPhone 3G in 1998 has three chief features: support for GPS, 3G data, and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. Followed by iPhone 3GS in 2009 and iPhone 4 in 2010. On 24 2011, Steve Jobs announced his resignation as Apple CEO. As most people correctly speculated at that time, it was because of his extremely frail health.

Personal Life

Steve Jobs first met his wife, Laurene Powell, in 1989 when she attended his guest lecture at Stanford Graduate School of Business. They got married in 1991, their wedding ceremony was conducted by Jobs’ Zen master, Kobun Chino Otogawa. Jobs fathered three children, Reed (1991), Erin (1995), and Eve (1998).

Steve Jobs’s relationship with his first child, Lisa Brannan, during her younger years, was neglectful. He managed to rekindle their relationship after he resigned from Apple in 1985 and developed a working relationship with his former girlfriend Brannan to co-parent Lisa. After his adoptive mother, Clara Jobs, passed away in 1986, Jobs asked for his father’s blessing to search for his biological mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson. consequentially, Jobs also met his biological sister, Mona Simpson.

However, Steve Jobs flat out refused to meet nor care to search for his biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali. Bizarrely, Steve Jobs had met his biological father a few times at a Mediterranean restaurant near San Jose which his father owned; they exchanged greetings and shook hands when Jobs was a diner there. Jobs only learned about this after his sister visited their father at his restaurant in Sacramento.

Philanthropy

Individuals and organizations criticized Jobs for being the least philanthropic billionaire by comparing him to other generous billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warrant Buffet. Supporters of Steve Jobs countered the criticisms that he is not obligated to give away his hard-earned wealth to anyone. Some neutral statements were the electronic products from Apple were more meaningful contributions from Jobs to society than direct charity.

Death

Less than two months after Steve Jobs officially announced his resignation as Apple CEO, he passed away from pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011.

According to some medical experts, his cancer is curable, but Jobs resisted his doctors’ recommendation for 9 months in favor of alternative medicine.

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