Who is Steve “Woz” Wozniak?
Steve Wozniak, the creative and technical genius behind Apple's early success, is the somewhat lesser-known counterpart to the late Steve Jobs. The two founded Apple together in 1976 along with business partner Ronald Wayne (who held a 10% stake in the company for about 12 days before selling it to the duo for $800).
Nearly half a century later, Wozniak is the only one of the three still working for the prominent tech company, at least according to his Linkedin profile. In reality, his role with Apple today is only ceremonial. His job title is “Mate,” and when he spoke to Mercury News in 2020, he said he only brings home about $50 a week from the company. However, in 2018 he stated“I always represent Apple when I make appearances or give interviews.”
Today, Woz makes public appearances and gives speeches, including the May 2024 Commencement Address at CU Boulder, a university from which he was expelled in 1969 for hacking the institution's computer system to send prank messages. He also works on a variety of passion projects (such as his satellite data company Privateer) and serves as a panelist/judge/investor on the startup funding reality show, “unicorn hunters.”
So after all these decades, how much is the legendary engineer and founder of Apple worth and how much? it could have been worth it Had he kept his Apple shares?
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What is Steve Wozniak's net worth?
Most sources, including Business Insider, NDTV, and Money Control, put Wozniak's net worth at $140 million.
Celebrity Net Worth, a popular but dubious website that hosts regularly updated (though rarely found) net worth pages for virtually every well-known public figure, pegs Woz's net worth substantially lower, at just $10 million.
Regardless of which figure is closer to the real number, one thing is certain: Wozniak would be a lot, a lot richer if he had held onto his Apple shares longer. Here's what it could have been worth if you had kept your shares:
How much would Wozniak's Apple shares be worth today if he hadn't sold them?
Before Apple went public in the late 1980s, Wozniak owned about 8.7% of the company's shares. Since CEO Jobs refused to grant stock options to employees before the IPO, Wozniak took it upon himself to give some of his own capital to his colleagues before the shares went public.
When the IPO occurred, Woz's stake in the company was about 7%, or about 3.989 million shares, which would have been worth about $87,758,000 at Apple's initial public share price of 22 Dollars.
In early 1985, Woz left the company for good and sold most of his shares, stating that it had been “going in the wrong direction for the last five years.”
A 7% stake in Apple in January 1985, when it was trading at around $29 per share, would have been worth about $115,681,000, so this is probably about what Woz was worth after his departure from the company.
Fast forward almost 40 years to May 2024, and a 7% stake in Apple would be worth $203.7 billion. If he had kept his stake in Apple from 1980, this amount would make Wozniak the second richest person in the world after Bernard Arnault, richer than Bezos, Musk or Zuckerberg.
More net worth:
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- Marc Benioff Net Worth: How Much The Salesforce Founder Makes As CEO
Wozniak's career with Apple
Apple may have been Jobs' company, but its first products were, in terms of design and engineering, 100% the work of Steve Wozniak. Jobs may have been the face of the brand, but Woz was its inventor.
When the two formed the company on April Fool's Day 1976, Wozniak had completed the design of what would become the Apple I computer, and had already presented it to HP (where he worked at the time) only to be rejected in multiple occasions. occasions.
The company received funding from an Intel employee, who requested that Woz leave his job at HP to work at Apple full time. The two Steves assembled Apple I boards at Jobs' parents' house and sold their first batch of 50 to a local computer store.
The Apple I, however, was just a board: it didn't come with a case, power supply, or display, all of which had to be built in by the user. For this reason, the device had limited appeal outside of computer hobbyist circles.
Bolo Branch and Museum, CC-BY-SA-2.0-FR via Wikimedia Commons
Next, Woz designed the Apple II, a more complete machine that included a casing, a keyboard, a built-in programming language, and the ability to produce color graphics. The Apple II is considered by many to be the first true personal computer, and its widespread appeal helped propel Apple into the mainstream, paving the way for its successful initial public offering (IPO) in 1980.
However, not after the company went public, Wozniak crashed a plane and suffered physical injuries and a period of anterograde amnesia, forcing him to take a step back from his work with Apple. During this gap year, he returned to school at UC Berkeley and helped organize a technology-themed music festival.
In 1983, Wozniak returned to work at Apple, but soon became disillusioned with Steve Jobs' increasingly disrespectful attitude toward the Apple II, even though it had made the company profitable and provided most of its revenue. In 1985, Woz left Apple permanently to pursue other companies and, in doing so, sold most of his shares.
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