Andrew Grove Net Worth

What is Andrew Grove's Net Worth?

Andrew Grove was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who had a net worth of $500 million at the time of his death in 2016. One of the original employees at Intel Corporation, Andrew Grove eventually became its third CEO and transformed Intel into the largest semiconductor company in the world. He has widely been credited with driving the growth of Silicon Valley and influencing electronics manufacturing worldwide.

Early Life and Education

Andrew Grove was born Gróf András István on September 2, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary to Jewish parents Mária and György. When he was four years old, he contracted scarlet fever and nearly died; he survived but with partial hearing loss. At the age of eight, Grove went with his mother to find shelter with family friends during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. His father, meanwhile, was captured and forced into slave labor; he reunited with the family after the war.

During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Grove left his family and country and fled to Austria. The following year, he immigrated to the United States with hardly any money or English speaking ability. Grove eventually adapted, and in 1960 he earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York. He went on to obtain his PhD in the same field from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.

Career Beginnings

After earning his PhD, Grove worked as a researcher at Fairchild Semiconductor in San Jose, California. He eventually became the company's assistant director of development. In 1967, Grove published a college textbook on integrated circuits entitled "Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices."

Intel Corporation

In 1968, after leaving Fairchild Semiconductor, Grove joined the new technology company Intel, which was co-founded by fellow former Fairchild employees Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Grove originally served as Intel's director of engineering, inaugurating the company's manufacturing operations. During the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s, Grove helped oversee Intel's development of one of the earliest digital watches, as well as an electronic calculator and the world's first general-purpose microprocessor. At the end of the decade, he became the president of Intel.

In the 1980s, Grove was instrumental in guiding Intel's manufacturing of increasingly powerful microprocessors. He became CEO of the company in 1987, serving in that role until 1998. Meanwhile, Grove was chairman of the board from 1997 to 2004. He is credited with having transformed Intel from a manufacturer of memory chips into the largest semiconductor company in the world, with a 4,500% increase in its market capitalization during his tenure as CEO. Grove's management style was noted for encouraging experimentation, change, and open communication. Additionally, he promoted competitiveness as a driver of progress and innovation. Grove is credited with developing the goal-setting framework known as objectives and key results (OKR).

Anne Knudsen/Getty Images

Writing and Teaching

Grove wrote a number of books after his first, the college textbook "Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices," in 1967. In 1983, he published "High Output Management," describing his management and productivity methods at Intel. The book was reissued in 1995, and in 1996 Grove published the business book "Only the Paranoid Survive," named after one of his guiding principles. Later, in 2001, he published "Swimming Across: A Memoir." Grove's final two books, both co-written by Robert Burgelman, were "Strategy is Destiny" (2001) and "Strategic Dynamics" (2005). As a teacher, Grove taught graduate computer physics courses at his alma mater the University of California, Berkeley, as well as at Stanford University.

Philanthropy and Charity

In 2005, Grove donated $26 million to his alma mater the City College of New York. The largest single donation ever made to the College to that date, it inaugurated the Grove School of Engineering. Across the country, Grove was a major fundraiser for the University of California, San Francisco's Mission Bay campus and its many research facilities and programs. In other philanthropic endeavors, he was a longtime member of the global humanitarian organization the International Rescue Committee, serving on its board of directors. Grove also supported several foundations researching Parkinson's disease, which he had later in life.

Honors and Awards

Grove received a host of accolades for his pioneering work in business and technology. He was given honorary degrees from the City College of New York, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Harvard University, and in 1997 was named Time Person of the Year and Chief Executive's CEO of the Year. In 2000, Grove earned the prestigious IEEE Medal of Honor from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The next year, he was given the Strategic Management Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Personal Life and Death

While working as a busboy in 1957, Grove met Austrian refugee Eva Kastan, who was working as a waitress and studying at Hunter College. The pair married in Queens in mid-1958. Grove and Kastan had two daughters, Karen and Robie, and remained together until Grove's passing.

Grove was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000. He passed away on March 21, 2016 with no cause of death publicly disclosed.

Who's Richer?

Andrew
Grove

Compare!

John
Doerr