Omidyar is the founder of EBay, an online marketplace with about 147 million active buyers and more than 1.5 billion live listings. The San Jose-based company facilitated the sale of $87 billion in merchandise and reported revenue of $10.4 billion in 2021. It spun-off the online payment service PayPal in 2015.
Pierre Omidyar's net worth of $9.39B can buy ...
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The majority of Omidyar's fortune is derived from his stakes in EBay and PayPal. He owned about 4% of EBay, according to an August 2020 SEC filing, and about 5% of PayPal following its July 2015 spin-off from EBay, according to a February 2018 regulatory filing. His stakes are no longer disclosed and he's assumed to have since reduced his holdings based on historic sales patterns.
EBay has about 147 million active buyers, according to the company's 2021 annual report. The online auction website managed 1.5 billion listings and $87 billion of gross merchandise volume in 2021, according to the same report.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of share sales as well as charitable giving, taxes and market performance.
Kristin Fontanilla, a spokesperson for The Omidyar Group, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Born to Iranian parents -- his father was a surgeon; his mother was an academic -- Omidyar immigrated to the U.S. as a six-year-old, eventually earning a degree in computer science from Tufts University in 1988. He worked after school as a consumer software engineer at Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, before co-founding Ink Development (later renamed eShop), which was acquired by Microsoft.
In 1995, he began writing the code for an online marketplace that he called Auction Web. Three years later, he sold shares in a public offering under the name EBay.
Omidyar and his wife spend much of their time pursuing their venture-oriented philanthropic efforts, investing in for-profit and non-profit organizations through the Omidyar Group. He served on the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships during Barack Obama's administration.