What Is Tom Steyer's Net Worth?
Tom Steyer is an American hedge fund manager, environmentalist, philanthropist, and producer who has a net worth of $2.1 billion. Even though he rose to riches thanks to a hedge fund that he founded in 1986, Tom Steyer later turned to politics and the environment.
In late 2012, he sold his Farallon Capital hedge fund's shares, and by February 2013, he set aside $50 million to back select Democrats in that year's elections. Tom gave $11 million to support the election of Terry McAuliffe as governor of Virginia in 2013. Aside from politics, he has established himself as an avid environmentalist, taking part in several environmental measures on the California ballot. Steyer has been one of the loudest opponents of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Along with his wife, Kathryn Taylor, Tom was among the first to sign the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge in 2010. The couple has since donated tens of millions of dollars to alma maters Stanford and Yale for "advanced energy" research. They even created a foundation to start a community bank called One Pacific Coast Bank in 2004 and have spent more than $50 million on it to date.
Steyer co-founded Galvanize Climate Solutions and Farallon Capital, and he became a partner at the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in 1986. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election but dropped out after four state contests. He spent over $250 million on advertising for his campaign but did not obtain any pledged delegates. In October 2017, Tom launched the "Need to Impeach" campaign, spending $10 million on an ad campaign that called for then-President Donald Trump's impeachment. Steyer has produced the films "La Mission" (2009), "Becoming Bulletproof" (2014), and "Dolores" (2017) and the television series "Years of Living Dangerously" (2016).
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Early Life
Tom Steyer was born Thomas Fahr Steyer in June 27, 1957, in Manhattan, New York. He is the son of Marnie and Roy Steyer, and he has two brothers, Jim and Hume. Marnie taught remedial reading at a Brooklyn jail, and Roy was a partner at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm. Both of Steyer's brothers are attorneys, and Jim is also an author and a professor at Stanford University. Tom grew up on the Upper East Side, and he studied at the Buckley School and Phillips Exeter Academy. He then earned degrees in political science and economics from Yale University, graduating summa cum laude. At Yale, he was elected to be a member of Phi Beta Kappa and served as captain of the soccer team. Steyer was also a member of the senior society the Wolf's Head Society. He later graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business with an MBA, and he was an Arjay Miller Scholar there. From 2007 to 2017, Tom was a member of Stanford's board of trustees.
Farallon Capital
After he graduated from Yale, Steyer took a job at Morgan Stanley in the late '70s. From 1983 to 1985, he worked in the risk arbitrage division at Goldman Sachs, where his job involved mergers and acquisitions. In 1986, Tom became a partner at the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman as well as a member of the Executive Committee. That year he also founded the hedge fund Farallon Capital. In 2012, Steyer left his position at Farallon to devote more time to being an advocate for alternative energy, and he made the decision to end his carbon-polluting investments. A 2014 article in the "New York Times" stated that coal-mining companies that Farallon Capital lent money to or invested in under Tom's leadership had increased their production by 70 million tons per year since receiving Farallon's money and that Steyer was still invested in a coal mine in Maules Creek, Australia. After leaving the company, Tom hosted the think tank "Big Think Climate Meeting." In April 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom selected Steyer to be the co-chair of a task force to "help Californians recover as fast as possible from the economic calamity resulting from the coronavirus."
Tom worked on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign, and in 2004 and 2008, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Steyer was considered for Secretary of Treasury. Tom sought the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election, announcing his campaign in July 2019. He took part in six televised debates, and he came in sixth in the New Hampshire primaries and seventh in the Iowa caucuses. In South Carolina, he came in third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Tom spent more than $250 million on the campaign, surpassing every other Democratic candidate besides Mike Bloomberg.
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Personal Life
Tom married Kathryn Ann Taylor in August 1986, and they welcomed four children, Sam, Gus, Evi, and Henry. Kathryn graduated from Harvard College with a Master of Business Administration and earned a Juris Doctor from Stanford University. She was also a member of the President's Council for the United Religions Initiative. Steyer became involved with the Episcopal Church (his mother's religion) in his late 30s. In a 2013 interview with "The New Yorker," Tom stated, "I am very religious. I go to church every Sunday. I think about everything I'm doing now from a religious perspective. My midlife crisis was thinking about the purpose in living, and my reaction was to figure out that I believe in God." In 2018, two suspicious packages from mail bomber Cesar Sayoc addressed to Steyer were intercepted at the Burlingame postal sorting facility in California.
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Philanthropy
In 2006, Tom and Kathryn co-founded the social enterprise business OneRoof, Inc., which was dedicated to bringing employment skills, computer literacy, and broadband connectivity to rural towns in Mexico and India through OneRoof Internet Centers. In 2007, they co-founded Beneficial State Bank to provide "commercial banking services to underserved Bay Area businesses, nonprofits, and individuals." The couple put up more than $20 million to launch the bank and establish the One PacificCoast Foundation. In 2010, Tom and Kathryn both signed onto Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' initiative The Giving Pledge, and the following year Steyer became a member of the board of the nonprofit organization of Next Generation. Two years later, he founded the political action committee/environmental advocacy nonprofit organization NextGen Climate. In 2015, Tom founded the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality and Middle Class Opportunity.
Tom Steyer (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Awards and Honors
Steyer has received Consumer Watchdog's Phillip Burton Public Service Award (2011), the California League of Conservation Voters' Environmental Leadership Award (2012), the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Achievement Award (2013), and the Open Space Institute's Land Conservation Award (2015). In 2015, he was honored with Equality California's Humanitarian Award "for his work advancing progressive causes that benefit the LGBT community." In 2019, Tom earned a News & Documentary Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary for the documentary "Dolores," which aired as part of the PBS series "Independent Lens."
Real Estate
Steyer owns an $18 million Lake Tahoe mansion. President Biden and his family stayed at the six-bedroom estate in August 2023, "renting the home for fair market value."
