What is Marcelo Claure's Net Worth and Salary?
Marcelo Claure is a billionaire technology entrepreneur and investor who has a net worth of $1.3 billion. Marcelo Claure is the founder and CEO of Claure Group. Among his myriad other business endeavors, he has served in executive positions at such companies as Sprint, SoftBank Group, and Shein. Claure is also involved in the world of sports, and is the owner of the Bolivian professional football team Club Bolívar and co-owner of the Spanish professional football team Girona FC.
Marcelo Claure is probably best known for his time working at Masayoshi Son's Softbank during the implosion of WeWork and its founder Adam Neumann. In 2013 Softbank bought 57% of his telecommunications company Brightstar for $1.3 billion, valuing the business as a whole at $2.2 billion. Claure's remaining 42% was worth around $1 billion on paper at that valuation. A year later, Marcelo orchestrated Brightstar's full acquisition by Sprint. He was then named CEO of Sprint. At the time of this acquisition, Brightstar was generating $10 billion per year in revenue and was the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States.
Softbank Salary
During his time working at Softbank, Marcelo was consistently one of the highest paid business executives in Japan. He typically earned around $20 million per year. In December 2021 Marcelo reportedly requested a multi-year contract that would have paid him as much as $2 billion. Softbank reportedly countered with an offer in the tens of millions. Perhaps not surprisingly, a few months later he founded his own firm, the Claure Group. Upon his departure, he received a severance package estimated at $94 million, including a $47 million payout and potential future incentive payouts
Early Life and Education
Raul Marcelo Claure Bedoya was born on December 9, 1970 in Guatemala to Bolivian parents. When he was two, he moved with his family to Morocco, and then to the Dominican Republic. The family finally settled in La Paz, Bolivia, where Claure spent the majority of his childhood. He was educated at the Instituto Domingo Savio and the American Cooperative School of La Paz, graduating from the latter in 1989. For his higher education, Claure first went to the University of Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts before transferring to Bentley College in Waltham. He graduated from Bentley with a BS in economics and finance.
Career Beginnings
After graduating from college, Claure returned to La Paz and became the head of business operations at the Bolivian Football Federation. In 1995, he came back to the United States and purchased the cellular retailer USA Wireless, expanding the company before selling it the next year. Claure subsequently became the president of the California-based communications company Small World Communications, leading the company for two years before moving to Miami, Florida.
(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
Brightstar and Sprint
In Miami in 1997, Claure founded the wireless services company Brightstar, and became its CEO. Originally, he targeted the market in Latin America. In 2001, Brightstar began a distribution agreement with Motorola for all of Latin America, and in 2007 the companies entered into a global distribution agreement.
In 2013 Claure sold 57% of Brightstar to Softbank at a valuation of $2.2 billion. A year later he orchestrated the sale of Brightstar to the Sprint Corporation. After serving on the company's board of directors for many months, he became the president and CEO of Sprint on August 11, 2014. During his tenure through 2018, Claure was credited with leading a turnaround of the company by gaining over two million customers and making Sprint net income positive for the first time in over a decade. After his time as CEO, Claure served as executive chairman of Sprint from 2018 to 2020, and oversaw the company's merger with T-Mobile. He subsequently became a member of the board of the combined company.
SoftBank Group
In 2017, Claure joined the board of the technology investment company SoftBank Group, and in 2018 became the company's COO. He also became the CEO of both SoftBank Group International and SoftBank Latin America. In his role as COO of SoftBank, Claure was given oversight of such portfolio companies as Boston Dynamics, Fortress, SB Energy, and WeWork. He also headed the SoftBank Latin America Fund, considered to be the largest technology fund focused exclusively on the market in Latin America; and the SB Opportunity Fund, which invests in entrepreneurs of color. In early 2021, Claure began overseeing the SoftBank Miami Initiative, which funds startups in Miami.
Other Companies
In 2022, Claure founded and became the CEO of his own investing firm, Claure Group. The next year, he co-founded the $500 million Bicycle Capital, a private equity fund dedicated to tech startups in Latin America. Claure was appointed executive chairman and managing partner of the fund. Elsewhere, he was appointed chair of the Latin American operations of the fast-fashion retailer Shein.
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Sports Team Ownership
Claure is significantly involved in the world of sports, specifically football. In 2008, he launched a group that took ownership of the Bolivian professional football team Club Bolívar. Later, in 2012, Claure partnered with David Beckham and Simon Fuller to launch Miami Beckham United, through which they established the new Miami MLS franchise Inter Miami CF. Elsewhere, Claure is a co-owner of the Spanish professional football club Girona FC.
Philanthropy
On the philanthropic side of things, Claure assisted Nicholas Negroponte in the founding of the non-profit initiative One Laptop Per Child in 2008. The organization worked to provide low-cost laptop computers to disadvantaged grade-school students. In 2016, Claure launched the 1Million Project Foundation in partnership with Sprint to give free computer and Internet access to underserved students in the United States. Following Sprint's merger with T-Mobile, the initiative was renamed Project 10Million.
Personal Life
In 2005, Claure married Jordan Engard. Together, they have four daughters and two sons. Claure also has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage.
