Al Gore Net Worth

What is Al Gore's Net Worth?

Al Gore is a former senator, Vice President, environmental activist, and entrepreneur who has a net worth of $300 million. Al Gore's career spans politics, environmentalism, and business. After serving as a U.S. Representative (1977-1985), Senator (1985-1993), and Vice President under Bill Clinton (1993-2001), Gore transformed himself from politician to climate activist and successful businessman.

Following his narrow defeat in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Gore pivoted to environmental advocacy, producing the influential documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006. His climate work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Gore's business career has been remarkably successful. In 2004, he co-founded Generation Investment Management with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood. This investment firm is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research and client alignment, with Gore serving as Chairman. Generation currently manages approximately $25 billion in assets and has pioneered sustainable investing by demonstrating that environmentally and socially responsible companies can deliver strong financial returns.

Gore's tech investments have been equally impressive. He has worked with Google, served on Apple's board of directors, and co-founded Current TV, which he and his partners sold to Al Jazeera for several hundred million dollars in 2013.

Al served on the Board of Directors for Apple Inc. from 2003 to 2024. He was one of 9 board members. As a member of Apple's board, Al earned a salary of $377,000 per year. His Apple position also, at one point, allowed Al to amass 100,000 shares of the company. He sold 59,000 shares in 2013 for a windfall of $30 million.

More recently, Gore has expanded his climate-focused investment portfolio. In 2021, Generation launched Just Climate, which invests in companies tackling hard-to-abate emissions in challenging sectors while delivering appropriate risk-adjusted returns. In 2023, Just Climate raised $1.5 billion for its first climate fund, attracting major institutional investors like CalSTRS and PSP Investments. Generation also launched a $1.7 billion Sustainable Solutions Fund IV targeting companies contributing to lower emissions, increased financial inclusion, and more accessible healthcare.

Financial Disclosures & CurrenTV Sale

Al Gore has earned the vast majority of his current net worth in the decades after leaving the White House. According to his last financial disclosure released when he was Vice President in 2000, Al Gore's net worth at that time ranged between $1.4 and $2.5 million. The vast majority of his net worth at that time was attributed to the value of his family's property in Tennessee. Upon leaving the White House, Al pivoted to a career as a media entrepreneur with the founding of the cable network CurrenTV. In 2012, Al and his partners sold CurrenTV to Al Jazeera for $500 million. As 20% owner of the network, Gore's pre-tax cut of the sale was $100 million.

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Early Life

Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was born on March 31, 1948, in Washington, D.C., to a politically influential family. His father, Albert Gore Sr., served as a U.S. Representative and later Senator from Tennessee, while his mother, Pauline LaFon Gore, was one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt Law School. Gore's childhood was split between two worlds: during the school year, he lived in the Embassy Row section of Washington, D.C., at The Fairfax Hotel, and during summers, he worked on his family's farm in Carthage, Tennessee, where they grew tobacco and hay and raised cattle.

Gore received his education at St. Albans School, an elite preparatory institution in Washington, D.C., where he excelled both academically and athletically. He served as captain of the football team, participated in basketball, threw discus for the track and field team, and was actively involved in art and student government. After graduating from St. Albans in 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard University, where he was roommates with future star actor Tommy Lee Jones, and initially planned to major in English and pursue a career as a novelist. However, his interests shifted toward government and politics. During his freshman year, he was elected president of the student government council.

Gore's college years coincided with the tumultuous period of anti-Vietnam War protests. While he personally opposed the war, he did not participate in the protest movement at Harvard, feeling it was misguided to use a private university as a venue for venting anger about the conflict. Instead, he channeled his political energy into more conventional avenues, even helping his father write an anti-war address for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

After graduating with honors from Harvard in 1969 with a degree in government, Gore immediately became eligible for the military draft. Despite his opposition to the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the U.S. Army out of a sense of civic duty and a belief that it wouldn't be fair for someone with fewer options to go in his place. He served as a military journalist for The Army Flier at Fort Rucker before being deployed to Vietnam in January 1971, where he completed his service until May that year.

Political Career

After returning from Vietnam, Al Gore began his professional life as an investigative reporter for The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper, while simultaneously pursuing studies in law and philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His journalistic experiences led him to consider a career in law, but in 1976, he abruptly left Vanderbilt Law School to pursue a career in politics when longtime U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins suddenly announced his retirement from Tennessee's 4th congressional district.

Gore won the 1976 election to the U.S. House of Representatives by a narrow margin and went on to serve four terms (1977-1985). In 1984, when longtime Senator Howard Baker retired, Gore successfully ran for his seat in the U.S. Senate. As a senator, Gore gained recognition for his work on technology issues, particularly his sponsorship of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act, which helped expand the early internet.

In 1988, at age 39, Gore made his first bid for the presidency. During the Democratic primaries, he positioned himself as a moderate Southern Democrat and managed to win several states on Super Tuesday. However, he ultimately placed third in the nomination race behind Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, winning only seven states in the primaries.

Four years later, in 1992, Bill Clinton selected Gore as his running mate, creating a ticket of two moderate Southern Democrats from neighboring states. The Clinton-Gore ticket defeated incumbent President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle in the general election and went on to win re-election in 1996 against Republicans Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. Gore served as Vice President from 1993 to 2001, becoming the first Democrat to serve two full terms as Vice President since John Nance Garner under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

After eight years as Vice President, Gore announced his candidacy for the 2000 presidential election. He secured the Democratic nomination and selected Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate. The election against Republican candidate George W. Bush became one of the most contentious and controversial in American history.

On election night, the results hinged on Florida's 25 electoral votes. The initial count showed Bush with a razor-thin lead of just 537 votes out of nearly six million cast in the state. This triggered an automatic machine recount under Florida law. What followed was a complex legal battle over disputed ballots and recount procedures that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 12, 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the Court ruled 5-4 to halt a manual recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, effectively awarding Florida's electoral votes and the presidency to Bush.

Gore won the national popular vote by over 500,000 votes but lost the Electoral College 271-266. In a widely praised concession speech on December 13, Gore gracefully accepted the outcome "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy," though he strongly disagreed with the Court's decision. In a final ironic twist of constitutional duty, Gore, as the sitting Vice President, had to preside over the congressional session that certified Bush's electoral victory on January 6, 2001.

Film

After leaving political office, Al Gore reinvented himself as a leading environmental activist and documentary filmmaker. His most significant contribution to public discourse on climate change came with the 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," directed by Davis Guggenheim. The film was essentially a cinematic adaptation of Gore's traveling slideshow presentation on global warming, which he had been delivering around the world for years.

"An Inconvenient Truth" presented scientific evidence of climate change and its potential catastrophic effects on the planet. Using compelling visuals, charts, and personal anecdotes, Gore made the complex science of climate change accessible to general audiences. The film's narrative interwove the scientific presentation with elements of Gore's personal and political life, creating a documentary that was both informative and emotionally engaging.

Released to critical acclaim, "An Inconvenient Truth" became a commercial success unprecedented for a documentary film, grossing approximately $50 million worldwide. At the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, it won two Oscars: Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up." The film's impact extended beyond the box office and awards, as it significantly raised public awareness about climate change and reinvigorated the environmental movement globally. It was also incorporated into educational curricula in schools around the world, though this sparked some controversy and legal challenges.

Following the success of the first film, Gore released a sequel in 2017 titled "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. This follow-up documented the progress made in addressing climate change since the original film and focused more on solutions rather than just outlining the problem. It featured Gore's continued efforts to influence global climate policy, including his work at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, which resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement. While not as commercially successful as its predecessor, the sequel received a nomination for Best Documentary at the 71st British Academy Film Awards.

Through these films, Gore established himself as one of the world's most recognizable and influential advocates for climate action. His work in this field, coupled with his efforts through the Climate Reality Project (which he founded), eventually led to him sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Farming

It was reported that in 1999, Al Gore sold $600,000 worth of cows. At this point in time, his net worth was only $1.7 million, and most of this wealth came from pasture rents and royalties from a zinc mine. Records show that Gore gave the $600,000 to his children before his presidential run.

(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times)

Current TV

Shortly after releasing An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore went on to found a cable news network called Current TV. While Current TV was declining into obscurity, Al Gore was reportedly paying himself $1.2 million per year in salary and bonuses. Despite its low ratings, Current TV was purchased by Al Jazeera for $500 million in 2012. Gore's 20% stake in Current TV earned him $100 million in pre-tax profits.

It was important for Gore and his business partners to finalize the deal before December 31st, 2012, as this was when capital gains tax rates were raised from 15% to 20%. Ironically, the previous tax rates were put in place by Gore's biggest political rival, George W. Bush. So even though Bush handed Gore a crippling defeat in the US elections, the president's tax laws helped Gore save $5 million.

Apple

Al Gore was a board member of Apple from 2003 to 2024. According to a company's filing, before the stock split in 2020, Gore owned around 100,000 shares of vested and unvested Apple stock. After the stock split 4-1, he would have received 400,000 shares. At various times, those shares would be worth $50 – 60 million, obviously depending on the share price.

In 2013, Gore exercised options on his shares, cashing in on 59,000 Apple shares that were in his possession since 2003. In the end, this led to a $30 million payday.

Inheritance

When Al Gore's father passed away, he inherited a number of shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp. These shares had an estimated value of between $500,000 and $1 million.

General Investment Management

Founded in 2004 by Al Gore and David Blood (former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management), Generation Investment Management (GIM) has evolved into one of the world's most influential sustainable investment firms. Gore serves as the Chairman, while Blood acts as the Senior Partner. The firm was established with a vision to promote long-term sustainable investing and advance sustainable capitalism as an enduring economic model. The firm manages approximately $25 billion in assets, with the majority invested in publicly traded companies.

Based in London and San Francisco, GIM employs over 100 people and operates four main investment strategies: Global Equity, Asia Equity, Growth Equity, and Private Equity. The firm began investing client money in April 2005, just a year after its founding. GIM's current assets under management have grown significantly from the initial figure in the biography.

What sets GIM apart from traditional investment firms is its distinctive approach to portfolio selection. The firm integrates sustainability research within a rigorous framework of traditional financial analysis. GIM believes that this integrated approach "does not sacrifice economic value; it enhances economic returns while simultaneously confronting the world's greatest challenges." Their investment strategy examines not only traditional financial metrics but also Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors when evaluating potential investments.

GIM's performance has been impressive since its inception. At its 10-year anniversary in 2015, the firm reported that its flagship long-only global equity strategy had generated an alpha of 5.59% against the MSCI World Index, with a 12.14% annualized return compared to 6.55% for the index. This remarkable performance demonstrated that sustainable investing could outperform traditional investment approaches, silencing many critics in the financial world.

Between 2008 and 2011, GIM generated over $218 million, which was distributed among its 26 partners. As a co-founder, Gore likely received a significantly larger share of these profits compared to other partners. However, like any investment firm, GIM has experienced both successes and setbacks. The firm suffered a substantial loss of over $165 million from an investment in a solar panel company that failed.

In recent years, GIM has continued to expand its sustainable investment portfolio. In 2022, the firm launched its Sustainable Solutions Fund IV, a $1.7 billion vehicle representing a 70% increase from its previous growth fund. This fund targets high-growth businesses with revenues between $30 million and $300 million that advance environmental and social goals.

Speaking Fees

After the success of "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore embarked on a speaking tour, charging upwards of $200,000 for a single speaking event.

Personal Life

Al Gore married Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson in 1970 after they met at a high school dance. The couple had four children together: Karenna, Kristin, Sarah, and Albert III. Throughout his political career, Tipper was a visible and active partner, known for her advocacy work in mental health and music labeling through the Parents Music Resource Center. In 2010, after 40 years of marriage, Al and Tipper announced their separation, though they have remained on amicable terms.

Real Estate

Al owns at least $25 million worth of real estate around the United States.

In 2010, Al purchased an ocean-view estate in Montecito, California, for $8.9 million. Today, this home is likely worth north of $15 million. The gated villa sits on 1 ½ acres of land and features a pool and spa. The house provides over 6,500 square feet of living space and high ceilings. Fountains adorn the outer perimeter. The famous environmentalist was heckled when news of this came to light, as this purchase seemed to contradict his stance on climate change. After all, his critics argued, why would a man so concerned about rising sea levels invest in property by the coast?

Al Gore's property in Belle Meade, Tennessee, caused even more controversy for Gore. He was forced to add solar panels to this 10,000-square-foot property when it was revealed how much energy his household was consuming. One report found that Gore's mansion, which is worth an estimated $8 million, consumed 34 times more energy than an average household over a period of one month and that his swimming pool alone consumed enough energy to power six homes over a one-year period. His home is also heated by natural gas, which is a big no-no among environmentalists. All in all, Gore was spending over $2,400 per month on utility bills.

Funnily enough, George W. Bush got the last laugh once again in the midst of this controversy. Observers soon pointed out that, in contrast, George was living in one of the most sustainable, green-friendly homes imaginable. It was revealed that Bush Jr.'s home had a smaller footprint of 4,000 square feet, and it was heated by sustainable geothermal energy, 75 times more efficient than a conventional heating/cooling system. Bush even made a point to collect rainwater from the roof, purify it, and then redirect it as irrigation to the surrounding fields. Once again, Al Gore was outdone.

In San Francisco, Al owns a condo in the St. Regis building that is worth an estimated $3 million.

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