An Optometrist Who Bought Apple AND Microsoft At Their IPOs – Then Never Sold – Is The Under-The-Radar Billionaire Who Just Paid $40 Million For A Ferrari Luce

On Saturday night at Monterey Car Week, someone paid $40 million for a brand-new Ferrari. Not a vintage Ferrari 250 GTO. Not a race car driven by Michael Schumacher. Not a machine with decades of provenance and a championship pedigree. A brand-new electric Ferrari.

The car was the Ferrari Luce "Chassis 0," the first production example of Ferrari's first electric vehicle. Its estimated MSRP is $1.1 million, meaning the winning bidder paid more than 36 times that figure and set a new world record for the most expensive new car ever sold at auction.

So who was willing to spend $40 million on it? His name is Herbert "Herbie" Wertheim, and unless you spend a lot of time studying billionaires, obscure stock-market legends, Florida philanthropy, or extremely expensive Ferraris, there's a pretty good chance you've never heard of him. We estimate Wertheim's net worth at $5 billion, and the strangest thing about his fortune is how he made it.

Wertheim didn't found a software company, run a private-equity firm or hedge fund, inherit billions, get rich from crypto, or take a startup public. He essentially became a multibillionaire by doing what millions of ordinary Americans attempt to do every day in their Fidelity and Schwab accounts: He bought stocks. He just happened to be phenomenally good at it.

(Photo by Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

From An Eye Doctor To A Multibillionaire

Wertheim was born in Philadelphia in 1939 to Jewish immigrants who had fled Nazi Germany. His family later moved to Hollywood, Florida, where they lived above the family bakery. He was dyslexic and struggled badly in school, and his home life was difficult. As a teenager he sometimes ran away, spending time hunting and fishing in the Everglades with Seminoles and hitchhiking around Florida picking fruit.

At 16, truancy landed him before a judge. According to Wertheim, he was given a choice between reform school and the U.S. Navy, and he chose the Navy. Military aptitude testing revealed something his childhood teachers had apparently missed: Wertheim was extremely good at mechanics and organization. He studied physics and chemistry, worked in naval aviation, and started investing his Navy pay in stocks. His first investment came at 18 when he bought shares of Lear Jet.

After leaving the Navy, Wertheim studied engineering and worked for NASA before earning a scholarship to optometry school. He eventually opened a South Florida optometry practice, but he was also constantly tinkering with inventions. In 1969, Wertheim developed an eyeglass-lens tint designed to filter ultraviolet light. The following year he founded a company called Brain Power Inc., or BPI, which developed tints, dyes, laboratory equipment, cleaners, and other products used by the optical industry.

One of his cleverest early inventions was a chemical that could strip tint from plastic lenses and restore them to clear. That allowed opticians to correct mistakes instead of throwing lenses away or maintaining huge inventories of different colors. Brain Power became a very good business, but it never became a gigantic business. When Forbes profiled Wertheim in 2019, BPI had just 49 employees and was generating around $25 million in annual revenue and $10 million in profit.

For most entrepreneurs, that would have been the story. For Wertheim, it was the cash machine that financed the real story.

He Just Kept Buying Stocks

Wertheim continuously funneled his earnings and BPI profits into the stock market, and he had some spectacular timing. He bought Apple at its 1980 IPO, then bought more when the company was struggling and the stock was around $10 in the 1990s. By the time Forbes profiled him in 2019, his 1.25 million Apple shares were worth around $195 million. He bought Microsoft at its 1986 IPO, and by 2019 that position was worth more than $160 million.

He also accumulated positions in companies including Google, IBM, Intel, 3M, General Electric, BP, and Bank of America. What makes Wertheim particularly fascinating is that he wasn't running a professional money-management organization. Forbes actually examined statements from the same kinds of Fidelity and Schwab brokerage accounts used by ordinary individual investors.

His strategy wasn't especially complicated. Wertheim loved companies with valuable intellectual property. Rather than obsessing over quarterly financial statements, he spent hours every week studying patents and technical documents. His engineering and scientific background gave him confidence that he could recognize important technology before Wall Street fully appreciated it. When he liked something, he tended to hold on. His stated goal was to buy stocks and almost never sell them.

That philosophy produced one investment that changed his financial life.

The $5 Million Investment That Became More Than $800 Million

During the 1970s, Wertheim became friends with Larry Mendelson, whose family eventually took control of a struggling aerospace-parts company called Heico. Wertheim understood aviation from his Navy background and helped the Mendelsons analyze the business. He then started buying the stock himself.

At one point, Heico shares traded for as little as 33 cents. Wertheim ultimately invested roughly $5 million, and Heico went on to become a powerhouse supplier of FAA-approved aircraft replacement parts and electronics. For decades, the business compounded at extraordinary rates.

By 2019, Forbes estimated Wertheim's Heico position was worth more than $800 million, making him the company's largest individual shareholder. He didn't need to create Heico, run it, buy the whole company, or manage anyone else's money. He simply bought the stock and waited.

He Also Once Lost $50 Million

Wertheim's record was not flawless. In 1982, he was heavily exposed to margin debt when Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker's interest-rate campaign hammered markets, and Wertheim was hit with a margin call. He later told Forbes the episode cost him $50 million.

That is a staggering loss under any circumstances, but especially in 1982, decades before Wertheim became known as a multibillionaire. The experience taught him to be much more cautious with leverage. Wertheim later lost money betting on a BlackBerry comeback as well. While his basic philosophy is to hold investments for extremely long periods, he has said he will generally sell when a position moves roughly 25% against him and the original investment thesis is no longer working.

Fortunately, his Apple, Microsoft, and Heico winners more than compensated for the mistakes.

And Now He's Spending $40 Million On Ferraris

Wertheim is now in his late 80s and clearly enjoying the money. In August 2025, he caused a sensation at Monterey Car Week when he paid $26 million for a one-of-one Ferrari Daytona SP3 "Tailor Made." That particular car was known as "599+1" because Ferrari had originally limited Daytona SP3 production to 599 examples before building one extra bespoke car for the charity auction. At the time, $26 million set a record for a new Ferrari sold at auction.

Wertheim apparently decided to break his own record one year later. The Ferrari Luce is a radically different machine. It is Ferrari's first production EV, and "Chassis 0" is literally the first production chassis from the program. Ferrari's Tailor Made division gave Wertheim's car a one-off Madreperla semi-gloss finish that changes from green to violet depending on the light. The interior uses metallic Perla leather with Grigio Corvara trim, while Ferrari created special wheels, brake calipers, and an optical-white background for the Ferrari badge.

The car now returns to Maranello before final delivery, which is expected in the first quarter of 2027. Wertheim's winning bid was $40 million. Just like last year's $26 million Daytona SP3 purchase, this wasn't merely an extravagant way to add another Ferrari to his garage. RM Sotheby's waived the buyer's premium, and the proceeds benefit the Ferrari Foundation and its educational initiatives.

That's an important distinction because philanthropy has become one of the defining themes of Wertheim's later life. He has put hundreds of millions of dollars into universities and medical institutions. Schools and colleges bearing the Wertheim name can be found at the University of Florida, Florida International University, Florida State University, UC San Diego, and UC Berkeley. In May 2026, he donated another $100 million to Baptist Health South Florida for cancer research, treatment, prevention, and education. He is also a member of the Giving Pledge and has committed to giving away the majority of his fortune.

So yes, Herbert Wertheim just spent $40 million on a Ferrari, but perhaps the more remarkable number is $66 million. That's what Wertheim has now paid for two Ferraris at Monterey in the space of 12 months, with the proceeds from both cars benefiting charity.

And the man writing those enormous checks didn't become a billionaire by inventing the next Facebook or managing a giant Wall Street fund. He built a modest optical-products company, deposited the profits into ordinary brokerage accounts, bought companies like Apple and Microsoft very early, made one astonishing bet on Heico, and then practiced the hardest investment strategy of all: He waited.