Steve Ballmer

About Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer is the high-wattage 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.

Ballmer ran Microsoft as CEO 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 $4.65 billion.

He has ramped up his philanthropy since 2014, putting over $2 billion into a donor-advised fund, with a focus on economic mobility; to date the Ballmers have given away nearly $3.5 billion.

In 2022, he and his wife Connie donated some $425 million to the University of Oregon to create an institute aimed at the behavioral and mental health needs of children in the state.