The Top 10 Richest People Who Invested In Apple (And How Much They’re Worth)

Net Worth: $300K

The first-ever investor in Apple was Ronald Wayne. He is a currently a retired electronics industry worker who met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when they were working on Atari. After a two-hour discussion at Wayne’s house, Jobs managed to convince him to co-found Apple. Wayne held 10% of the shares in the company.

Wayne designed the company logo, wrote the Apple I manual, and he wrote up the partnership agreement – the founding document of Apple. Still, 10 days later, he decided to sell his stakes in the company for a measly $800, thinking that the firm was not going to succeed. Today, he reports that he doesn’t regret his decision; it was the best possibility with the information he had at the time.

Net Worth: $74.5m

Bruce Sewell is currently the fourth-largest shareholder in Apple. He was the general counsel at the company between 2009 and 2017, when his position was replaced by Katherine Adams. Before that, he worked as Senior Vice President of Legal and Global Security.

Before Apple, Sewell worked at Intel, where he was responsible for leading the company’s legal and corporate affairs. He announced his retirement in 2017 and joined the non-profit Village Enterprise in April 2018.

Net Worth: $100m

Arthur Levinson is the current chairman of the board at Apple, and he is the current CEO of Calico, owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. His work with the healthcare division Calico focuses on aging and related illnesses, and he is also affiliated with the Broad Institute, a biomedical research center.

According to Investopedia, Levinson is the single-largest individual shareholder with 1.1 million shares as of Aug. 3, 2018.

Net Worth: $116m

Jeff Williams is the chief operations officer at Apple, below Tim Cook, the CEO of the company. Williams has been with the company since 1998, and he has been COO since December 2015. He is an instrumental part of the company, having led operations to introduce the first iPhone to the global market in 2007.

Williams also led operations around the launch of the iPod and the iPhone ever since their start. Currently, he is the fourth-largest individual shareholder with 108,085 shares of the company as of Oct. 3, 2018.

Net Worth:  $150m

Federighi is Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering; he oversees the development of iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. He used to work at NeXT, a computer software company that was bought by Apple in 1996. 

He left the firm in 1999 but found his way back in 2009, when he started working on macOS. Federighi is third-largest shareholder with 412,571 shares as of Aug. 9, 2018.

Federighi is known around Apple as “Hair Force One” due to his bouffant hair and his energetic personality; Tim Cook even refers to him as Superman at times because of his enthusiastic approach. 

Net Worth: $625m

Tim Cook is the current chief executive officer of Apple and the second-largest individual shareholder with 878,425 shares as of Aug. 24, 2018. Before joining Apple, he worked for IBM for 12 years, then in 1997, he became the vice president for corporate materials at CompaQ.

He joined Apple after Steve Jobs himself picked him and asked for him during a commencement speech. Reportedly, Cook decided to join after meeting Steve Jobs for the first time. His first job was senior vice president of worldwide operations. He has been with the company since 1998.

Net Worth: $1b

Arthur Rock invested in the company early on; reportedly he put forth $57.6K in 1978. He was persuaded to invest by Mike Markkula, Apple’s angel investor, but he wasn’t too impressed with the company, or the two scruffy-looking guys who claimed to run it.

Interestingly, Arthur Rock was on the board of Apple in 1985 when Steve Jobs was ousted from the company and John Sculley was named CEO. Although there are not many comments by Rock about the situation, it is known that he didn’t find Wozniak and Jobs too impressive; he believed that the two young men did not have the experience to run such a long operation.

Net Worth: $1.2b

Mike Markkula is the first angel investor in Apple Inc. Before his attention was caught by Apple, he used to work for Intel and made millions there, then retired at the age of 32. He was lured out of retirement by Steve Jobs, who was referred to Markkula by venture capitalist Don Valentin, who also invested in the company. 

Markkula saw potential in the Apple I computer, so he decided to invest $250K; thus, he became a one-third owner of the company and employee number 3, after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

As the man with the most expertise in the field of business, Markkula managed to bring in more credit and worked as a beta tester, and he wrote several smaller programs for the Apple II computer. Steve Wozniak believes that he was instrumental in the success of the company.

Net Worth: $1.5b

Laurence Rockefeller was a businessman, financier, and philanthropist. He was one of the pioneers of the field of venture capital, starting a company called Venrock Associates with his brother and sister.

The company started investing early in many tech companies such as Intel and Apple, and Laurence Rockefeller showed interest in various IT and public health-related products. He believed that technology such as the first Apple computer would further national security, which made him lead the company to invest in the new product.

Net Worth: $21.1b

Apple co-founder Steve Job’s widow, Lauren Powell Jobs, owns 5.5 million shares in the company, which is where most of her wealth comes from. In his will, Jobs left his wife all of the shares he held and the rest of his wealth, as well. 

Powell-Jobs is a savvy businesswoman in her own right. She founded Terravera, a natural foods company that she sold to retailers around Northern California. She also used to work for Goldman-Sachs as a fixed-income trading strategist. Powell Jobs also inherited the Steve Jobs Trust, which has a 7.3% stake in the Walt Disney Company.

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