What is Chamath Palihapitiya’s net worth in 2023? | Bio & Career

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Highlights

  • Chamath is a venture capitalist from Sri Lanka.
  • He is the founder and CEO of Social Capital.
  • He held a senior executive position at Facebook in its early days.
  • He is the co-host of the tech podcast All In.

Net worth

As of 2023, Chamath’s net worth is over $4 billion making up the biggest portion of the All In Podcast crew’s net worth. He co-hosts the All In Pod with 3 others.

Who is Chamath Palihapitiya?

Chamath Palihapitiya is a Canadian-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist from Silicon Valley. He’s one of the founding members of Social Capital, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto. Chamath’s got quite the resume, with numerous tech giants like Netscape, AOL Time Warner, and Facebook.

Early life

Born in Sri Lanka on September 3, 1976, Chamath Palihapitiya first moved to Canada in 1982 with his family.

He went to Lisgar Collegiate Institute before getting his electrical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in ’99. After that, he spent a year making trades at BMO Nesbitt Burns, a big investment bank. 

Career

It’s believed that most of Chamath’s wealth comes from Social Capital. However he has quite an impressive career history.

Let’s dive into his career journey.

AOL

After joining Winamp, a media player for Microsoft Windows, which AOL later acquired, Palihapitiya became the youngest vice president in the company’s history. He led the instant messaging division in 2004 before leaving AOL in 2005 to join Mayfield Fund.

Facebook

He joined Facebook in 2007, which was only three years old at the time, after leaving Mayfield.

Chamath became an early member of Facebook’s senior-most executive team. He led a team that focused on new user growth, which ultimately helped Facebook reach 1 billion users after four years. 

Before leaving the company, he also led the Facebook Phone and Facebook Home projects. 

Social Capital

He left Facebook in 2011 and established a VC fund called The Social+Capital Partnership with his former spouse. 

Later, in 2015, the firm’s name was changed to Social Capital. The fund was responsible for investing in companies such as Glooko, Inc, Yammer, SecondMarket, Slack, and Box. The fund had garnered over $1.1 billion in total assets from external investors by 2015.

Podcasting

Chamath Palihapitiya currently co-hosts the All-In Podcast with David O. Sacks, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. In May 2022, the All-In Podcast team organized the first All-In Summit in Miami. 

The summit brought together leaders from the business and tech industries to discuss the pressing issue of “What problem do you want to solve right now?”.

Personal life

Chamath was married to Brigette Lau, a partner at Social Capital. They got married in 2008 and have three children together.

Chamath is currently married to Nathalie Dompe, an Italian businesswoman and model who serves as the CEO of Dompe Holdings, a biopharmaceutical firm

Best Quotes by Chamath Palihapitiya

  • “People are unhappy because they’re chasing the wrong things. Money and power aren’t the answer – they never have been.”
  • “Success in Silicon Valley is all about creating value for others, not for yourself.”
  • “Valuable companies take decades to build. “
  • “Betting against entrepreneurs who are changing the world has never been a profitable endeavor.”
  • “Something like Bitcoin is really important because it is not correlated to the rest of the market.”
  • “The reality is that it’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. It’s never been a better time to work at a startup.”
  • “In Silicon Valley, it’s all about making an impact.”

Check out some more of Chamath’s best quotes here.

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