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The potential destiny of Apple founder Steve Jobs can be rich

This is how wealthy Steve Jobs would have been if he had kept his Apple stock, which is estimated

The potential destiny of Apple founder Steve Jobs can be rich

This is how wealthy Steve Jobs would have been if he had kept his Apple stock, which is estimated to be worth $7 billion in 2024. Apple (AAPL) started its “Think Different” ad campaign in 1997, honoring the outcasts, rebels, and the uprising whose original ideas transformed society. Though it might have easily included Steve Jobs, the company’s erratic co-founder, the well-known ad, which ignited Apple’s enormous, multibillion-dollar turnaround, featured notable figures like Albert Einstein, John Lennon, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jobs’s innovative work transformed the computer, music, film, and wireless industries with the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad, but his personal life was a roller coaster of highs and lows. His fame was further solidified on October 5, 2011, when he passed away tragically at the age of 56 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.

What is Jobs’ 2025 postmortem net worth?

Despite his many ups and downs, Job accumulated a wealth that, as of December 2024, Forbes estimates is worth $7 billion. Apple is surprisingly not responsible for much of that. 

Jobs’ early years and Apple’s beginnings

Jobs’ most well-known role was co-founding Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak and Steve Wayne, a business partner who owned 10% of the company for just over a week before selling it for $800. The “two Steves,” Jobs and Wozniak, first connected at Cupertino, California’s Homestead High School. Paul and Clara Jobs, who lived in a blue-collar area of San Francisco, adopted Jobs soon after his birth. Jobs was born Abdul Lateef Jandali. Throughout his youth, Jobs referred to his adoptive father Paul as his “dad.” He was a mischievous boy who was often misbehaving and tormented in school, but he loved spending time with him, especially when they worked together. 

For Jobs to attend Homestead High, the family moved to a three-bedroom home in Los Altos, California, using all of their savings. Wozniak, often known as “Woz,” became best friends with Jobs; his love of science fiction books and “Star Trek” served as the basis for his innovative, frequently illegal electrical inventions. By that time, Jobs was a long-haired hippie who had taken LSD and was interested in everything from Buddhism to electronics to music and literature.

Woz was expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder during his first year there for sending hoax messages by breaking into the school’s computer system. After just one semester, Jobs also left Reed College. Jobs came up with the concept to start a business and sell the Apple I, a motherboard-only personal computer that Woz designed in 1976. The two raised further money by selling Job’s Volkswagen vehicle (for $1,500) and Woz’s treasured calculator (for $250) after selling their first batch of fifty boards to a nearby computer store. An Intel engineer named Mike Markkula, who retired at the young age of 33 after earning millions from stock options, was discovered by them as an angel investor in 1977.

However, Markkula stepped out of retirement to help fund the new effort after learning about the Apple II microcomputer. He contributed $250,000 in funding and assisted with the incorporation. Before taking over as CEO himself in 1981 and 1983, Markkula also introduced the company to its first CEO, Michael Scott (1977–1981).The next thing Apple 2 was priced at $1298 ($6,727 in 2024 dollars) and came with 4K of RAM. Sales took off because of its clever floppy disk drive, even though it was more costly than other microcomputers of the era, such as the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor (PET) and Tandy-Radio Shack 80 (TRS-80).  

In 1977, 600 devices were sold; in 1978, 7,600; and in 1979, 35,000. Sales of the Apple II skyrocketed in 1980 after a spreadsheet application was added, and by the end of 1981, Apple Computer had sold 210,000 units, making the Apple II one of the first mass-produced personal computers. The Steves were several millionaires.

After leaving Apple, a career in jobs

Apple Computer’s first public offering (IPO) was on December 12, 1980. Shares were quoted at $22. Woz owned 3.9 million shares worth $87.8 million ($347 million in 2024 currency), or a 7 percent share of the business. Jobs held 7.5 million shares, or 15% of the business, valued at $217 million ($867 million in 2024 dollars). However, the company would go through a turbulent time in the years that followed, marked by a number of successful products as well as more serious setbacks and bitter internal conflict. Both In 1985, he left Apple Computer. Jobs was forced out by the board of directors and John Sculley, who was Apple’s CEO at the time. In a fit of rage, Jobs sold all but one of his company’s shares, which he later said he kept in order to continue receiving Apple’s annual reports. Later that year, Jobs founded NeXT with a handful of Apple employees. NeXT manufactured software and workstation PCs for the business and academic sectors. Programmers used the NeXTSTEP operating system to build video games such as “Doom,” “Heretic,” and “Strife.”

Jobs purchased Lucasfilm’s computer graphics branch in 1986, and Pixar, an independent studio, was born. Jobs contributed $50 million of his personal funds to the business, transforming Pixar into a significant animation force that created “Toy Story,” the first fully computer-animated motion picture. At its initial public offering (IPO) on November 29, 1995, Pixar’s shares were valued at $22, and the film brought in $358 million at the box office. Jobs became a billionaire when he acquired more than 80% of the business.

Jobs became the largest shareholder at 7% and a member of the board of directors after Disney acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006. The value of his shares was $3.9 billion. Apple was on the verge of going bankrupt during this time. Apple paid $429 million to acquire NeXT in 1996 in an attempt to persuade Jobs to rejoin the firm.

The inheritance of Lisa Brennan-Jobs

For the first 10 years of Lisa Brennan’s existence, Jobs and his daughter had a strained connection; in fact, Jobs disputed paternity at the time of her birth. She was the product of Jobs’ romance with Chrisann Brennan, his high school sweetheart, who left the house they shared in 1978 to give birth to her child on the All One Farm commune in Oregon.

In reality, Jobs’ “Local Integrated System Architecture” prototype—which ultimately failed—was the inspiration behind Lisa’s name. Jobs made amends with his daughter when a DNA test proved he was, in fact, Lisa’s father, and in 1986 she added his last name. According to Fortune, Brennan-Jobs inherited $25 million.

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