What is Andy Bechtolsheim’s Net Worth?
Andy Bechtolsheim, a German billionaire, tech entrepreneur, electrical engineer, and investor, has amassed a fortune of $20 billion. His initial wealth was accrued as the founder of Sun Microsystems, yet a significant portion of his wealth can be attributed to his early investment in Google. Bechtolsheim and his former Stanford professor, David Cheriton, were the first to invest in Google. In 1998, Andy and David each handed $100,000 checks to Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin to help them launch their search engine company. Additionally, Bechtolsheim has founded several other companies, including Granite Systems, Kealia, and various electronic design automation firms.
Andy Bechtolsheim’s Net Worth 2024, Age, Height, Weight, Social Media, Married, Family, Wiki Biography
| Information | Details |
| Gender | Male |
| Birth Date | September 30, 1955 |
| Age | 68 years old |
| Birth Place | Amberg, West Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Net Worth | $20 billion |
| Source of Wealth | Google, Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Arista Networks |
| Height | Not available |
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Andy Bechtolsheim Early Life and Education
Andy Bechtolsheim Born on September 30, 1955, in Finning, Landsberg, Bavaria, West Germany, Andy Bechtolsheim was the second of four children. Growing up in a television-free home, he often experimented with electronics. In 1963, his family moved to Rome, Italy, only to return to Germany five years later.
At the age of 16, Andy designed an industrial control system using the Intel 8008 for a local company, using the royalties from this project to fund his college education. He first enrolled at the Technical University of Munich as an engineering student, where he participated in the Jugend forscht contest for young researchers, eventually winning the physics prize in 1974. After graduating, he attended Carnegie Mellon University on a Fulbright scholarship, earning his MA in computer science in 1976. The following year, he enrolled in Stanford University’s Ph.D. program in electrical engineering.
During his time at Stanford, Andy designed a powerful modular computer system with built-in networking, inspired by the Xerox Alto computer, which he named the “SUN” workstation, standing for “Stanford University Network.” Bechtolsheim was advised by Forest Baskett and received assistance from Vaughan Pratt on the project.
Sun Microsystems founder
In 1982, with funding from venture capitalists, Bechtolsheim left Stanford to co-found Sun Microsystems with Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, and Vinod Khosla. Their first product was the Sun-1, the first generation of Unix computer workstations and servers, which used the Stanford CPU board design. By 1986, Sun Microsystems had gone public, and by 1988, it had reached $1 billion in sales. The company developed its own storage systems, software product suites, developer tools, and identity management applications, contributing significantly to the evolution of critical computing technologies such as Unix, thin client computing, SPARC microprocessors, and open-source software.
Sun Microsystems was headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley, with manufacturing facilities in various global locations, including Newark, California, and Linlithgow, Scotland. In April 2009, Oracle Corporation announced its acquisition of Sun for $7.4 billion, which was completed in early 2010.
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Granite Systems
In 1995, Andy left Sun and co-founded an Ethernet networking company with Stanford professor David Cheriton. Their company, Granite Systems, was acquired by Cisco just one year later for $220 million, earning Andy $132 million as a 60% owner. He then became vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Gigabit Systems Business Unit.
Andy Bechtolsheim Google and Investments
In September 1998, Andy made a highly successful venture capital investment by giving Larry Page and Sergey Brin $100,000 to create what would become Google. David Cheriton followed suit with his own $100,000 investment.
Thanks to this and other major investments, Bechtolsheim is now recognized as one of the most successful angel investors globally, particularly in electronic design automation. He invested in companies such as Magma Design Automation and Co-Design Automation, the latter of which developed the key hardware language SystemVerilog.
Bechtolsheim also invested in notable companies such as software and video game developer Tapulous, wireless chip company CrestaTech, and cloud-based interface Moovweb. Additionally, he was an early investor in Claria Corporation, which closed in 2008. From 2015 to 2017, Bechtolsheim invested in PerimeterX, a company focused on automated attack mitigation on-demand software.
Other Companies
In early 2001, Bechtolsheim founded Kealia with Stanford professor and Granite Systems partner David Cheriton, aiming to develop advanced server technologies using Advanced Micro Devices’ Opteron processor. Kealia was eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems in a 2004 stock swap, leading Bechtolsheim to return to Sun as senior vice president and chief architect.
In 2005, Bechtolsheim co-founded Arastra, a high-speed networking company, again with David Cheriton. The company later changed its name to Arista Networks, where Andy served as chairman and chief development officer. Arista went public in 2014 and now boasts a market cap of approximately $30 billion.
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Andy Bechtolsheim Personal Life and Honors
Bechtolsheim has never married and remains a German citizen. Over his career, he has received numerous honors, including the Smithsonian Leadership Award for Innovation in 1999 and a Stanford Entrepreneur Company of the Year Award. In 2000, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to computer workstations and high-performance network switching design.
FAQs: Andy Bechtolsheim’s Net Worth 2024
Still not satisfied? Here are some frequently asked questions:
How much money did Andy Bechtolsheim give the founders of Google?
In 1998, he invested $250,000 and ended up with 5.3 million shares when Google went public. That same year, Bechtolsheim put in $100,000, writing a check to Google’s founders before the company was even officially formed. It’s not clear how many shares he bought, but it’s estimated to be between 2.5 and 5 million.
What is Andy Bechtolsheim doing now?
Bechtolsheim is a co-founder of Arista Networks, a company in Santa Clara, California, that offers cloud networking services to clients like Microsoft. In 2023, Arista Networks earned $5.8 billion. He is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, having invested early in Google and co-founded Sun Microsystems.
What are the Best Andy Bechtolsheim quotes?
- Innovation is the never-ending search for better solutions.
- Ethernet always wins.
- Over the long term, absent of other barriers, economics always wins.