What is David Cheriton's net worth?
David Cheriton is a renowned Canadian computer scientist, Stanford professor, billionaire, philanthropist, and venture capitalist with a net worth of $15 billion. His wealth predominantly stems from his early investment in Google, making him one of the world's wealthiest individuals at various times, depending on Google's stock price.
In the late 1990s, David and his former student Andy Bechtolsheim each invested $100,000 in Google, marking the beginning of their financial triumphs. Today, David stands as the richest college professor in the world, continuing his role at Stanford in a non-teaching capacity. The duo also co-founded Ethernet company Granite Systems, later acquired by Cisco for $220 million, and publicly-traded network technology company Arista Networks.
Early Life
David Ross Cheriton was born on March 29, 1951, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Initially, he enrolled in the University of Alberta with intentions of studying music. After being rejected by the music department, he redirected his focus to mathematics and earned an undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia in 1973.
Teaching Career
He then obtained a Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Waterloo, graduating in 1978. Following his doctoral achievement, he became an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia before securing a position at Stanford University, where he taught computer science.
In the early 1980s, David led the Distributed Systems Group, developing the V microkernal operating system, which significantly influenced future tech innovations, including the Graphical User Interface and the Internet Protocol layer.
At Stanford, Cheriton mentored Andy Bechtolsheim, whose workstation project evolved into Sun Microsystems, later acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion.
Granite Systems
In 1995, David and Andy co-founded the Ethernet networking company, Granite Systems. A year later, Cisco acquired Granite Systems for $220 million, netting Andy $132 million and David, holding a 10% stake, $22 million.
Google Investment
In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford Ph.D. students, approached David and Andy with their idea for Google. Impressed, both wrote $100,000 checks on the spot, a venture that massively paid off, generating billions in returns.
Photo by Martin Klimek
Other Investments and Arista
Beyond Google, David and Andy continued their entrepreneurial pursuits with notable successes. David invested early in VMware, acquired by EMC for $625 million in 2004, and Aster Data Systems, acquired for $263 million in 2011.
In 2001, they founded a streaming video server called Kealia, later acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004. Additionally, they co-founded Arista Networks in 2004, which went public in 2014 and now has a market cap of approximately $30 billion.
Personal Life
Despite his immense wealth, David is known for his frugal lifestyle, describing his biggest splurge as buying a Honda Odyssey. He was married to Iris Fraser from 1980 to 1994, with whom he had four children.
In November 2005, he donated $25 million to the University of Waterloo, leading to the renaming of its school of computer science to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. He has also generously donated to the University of British Columbia.
