Steve Ballmer just joined the $100 billion club. Here are his career hits and misses

Yesterday, former chief executive officer at Microsoft Corp Steve Ballmer officially became a member of the elusive $100 billion club — according to an analysis conducted by Bloomberg.

There are currently only nine people in the world who have achieved this status, and at 65 years old, Ballmer earned his place among them just ahead of Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, whose net worth is reported at $98.6 billion.

The complete list of those who earn $100 billion or more is below.

1. Jeff Bezos: $212B

2. Elon Musk $177B:

3. Bernard Arnault: $169B

4. Bill Gates: $148B

5. Mark Zuckerberg: $130B

6. Larry Page: $115B

7. Sergey Brin: $111B

8. Warren Buffett: $101B

9. Steve Ballmer: $101B

The majority of billionaires above secured their wealth thanks to the surges in technology shares that have occurred in recent years. Together these men increased their wealth by $245 billion since January 2021 for a collective worth of $1.36 trillion.

Ballmer’s career hits

Ballmer stepped down as Microsoft’s CEO back in 2014 after a 14-year run with the company. He was replaced by Satya Nadella.

Since then, Ballmer purchased the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, which increased his fortune by more than $20 billion. Ballmer’s wealth also expanded by a sizeable margin earlier this year with his 4% stake in Microsoft. This stake is equivalent to roughly 333 million shares.

Back in June, Microsoft became the second US-listed company ever to reach a $2 trillion valuation, after Apple did so a few years earlier.

Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates became the first person to reach a net worth of $100 billion in 1999 at the age of 44.

Ballmer was the second person to become a billionaire in US dollars earned from stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was not a founder.

“Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world,” Ballmer once said of Microsoft’s success.

Before Ballmer’s tenure at Microsoft, he served as director of Accenture Ltd. and a general partner of Accenture SCA from 2001 to 2006.

Ballmer’s career misses

Although the tech magnate’s career is marked by many massive successes, it has also seen some notable miscalculations.

Back in 2007, Ballmer stated that “there’s no chance that the Apple iPhone is going to get any significant market shares.”

He was also a vocal detractor of Microsoft investing in Apple as a way of avoiding bankruptcy. The company ended up proceeding with this action and it led to success.

More broadly, Ballmer has been criticized for a perceived lack of awareness with respect to burgeoning technology trends. During his time at Microsoft, the company was slow to develop the kinds of tablets, smartphones, and music players that made Apple famous. One such example is the Courier, which is a prototype tablet that spent years in development hell before being indefinitely shelved in 2010.

Similar launch failures, that occurred under Ballmer’s watch may have been a contributing factor in Microsoft’s share price stagnation in the mid-oughts.

In fact, Ballmer was named one of the worst CEOs by the BBC in 2013. And Adam Hartung of Forbes described Ballmer as “the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company.”

But at this point in his career, it no longer matters if he was a genius or a just-barely-good-enough executive; he’s officially among the wealthiest of the wealthy in the world.