Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). As of February 2023, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his personal wealth at around $90 billion, making him the eighth-richest person on Earth. Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980, and subsequently left the MBA program at Stanford University. He eventually became president in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO on January 13, 2000. On February 4, 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella; Ballmer remained on Microsoft's Board of Directors until August 19, 2014, when he left to prepare for teaching a new class. His tenure and legacy as Microsoft CEO has received mixed reception, with the company tripling sales and doubling profits, but losing its market dominance and missing out on 21st-century technology trends such as the ascendance of smartphones in the form of iPhone and Android. Early life and education Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan; he is the son of Beatrice Dvorkin and Frederic Henry (Fritz Hans) Ballmer, a manager at the Ford Motor Company. Frederic was from Zuchwil, Switzerland and arrived in the United States in 1948. Steve's mother was the daughter of Shmuel Dvorkin, a Russian Jew who fled to the United States in 1914 and became a merchant for a glass store. Through his mother, Ballmer is a second cousin of actress and comedian Gilda Radner. Ballmer grew up in the affluent community of Farmington Hills, Michigan. Ballmer also lived in Brussels from 1964 to 1967, where he attended the International School of Brussels. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University. He graduated as valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, with a score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar. (He eventually became a member of the school's board of directors.) Ballmer attended Harvard University, where he was a manager for the Harvard Crimson football team and a member of the Fox Club, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He scored highly in the William Lowell Putnam