Larry Sanger Net Worth

What is Larry Sanger's Net Worth?

Larry Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who has a net worth of $650 thousand. Larry Sanger is the co-founder of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for which he coined the name and created initial drafts for many of its core guidelines. Before Wikipedia, he was the editor-in-chief of its predecessor Nupedia, and later he worked on such encyclopedic projects as the Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium, and Everipedia.

Early Life and Education

Larry Sanger was born on July 16, 1968 in Bellevue, Washington. From the age of seven, he grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. Sanger was raised in the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod and attended Sunday school. At the age of 16, he became an agnostic. After graduating from high school in 1986, Sanger went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon where he studied philosophy. It was during this time he became involved in the nascent Internet and began a listserver as a forum for students and tutors. Sanger also moderated a libertarian philosophy discussion list. After graduating from Reed with his Bachelor of Arts in 1991, Sanger attended the Ohio State University, where he earned his Master of Arts in 1995 and Doctor of Philosophy in 2000.

Nupedia to Wikipedia

While still in college, Sanger met Jimmy Wales, whose mailing list he had subscribed to. Later, in 2000, Sanger joined Wales's online encyclopedia Nupedia, becoming its editor-in-chief. Due to the website's slow progress, Sanger proposed the idea of using a wiki to solicit articles that could be put through Nupedia's peer-review process. This resulted in the creation of Wikipedia in early 2001. In addition to coining the name, Sanger created the site's first introductory and home pages, recruited the first few contributors, and made the initial drafts for many of the site's core guidelines going forward, including its "neutral point of view" and "ignore all rules" policies. However, he soon became disillusioned with Wikipedia due to his feeling the site was being overrun by trolls who undermined its policies. This was compounded by tensions between him and the Wikipedia community. As a result, Sanger was let go in early 2002. The next year, Nupedia shut down following a server crash. Since leaving Wikipedia, Sanger has been a vocal critic of the site, its policies, and its administrators. He has denounced it for lacking credibility and exhibiting a left-wing ideological bias, and has called it "broken beyond repair."

Other Internet Projects

In 2006, Sanger founded a new wiki-based free online encyclopedia, Citizendium, to compete with Wikipedia. He made it so the site would prohibit anonymous editing while using a group of experts to foster greater credibility and academic legitimacy. However, the site struggled to flourish and most of its experts left. In 2009, Sanger stopped editing Citizendium, and in 2010 he left the project. He has been involved with a number of other online encyclopedic and educational projects over the years, including Digital Universe and its Encyclopedia of Earth; the video-based youth project WatchKnowLearn; and the blockchain-based online encyclopedia Everipedia. Sanger served as the chief information officer of Everipedia from late 2017 to 2019. He went on to co-found the Knowledge Standards Foundation and launch the website Encyclosphere.

(Photo by Ulli Winkler/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Teaching and Lecturing

In 2002, Sanger taught philosophy at his alma mater the Ohio State University. Later in the decade, he visited Balliol College, Oxford to speak on the future of information and knowledge.

Personal Life

With his wife, whom he married in late 2001, Sanger has two sons. The family lived in Santa Cruz, California before settling in the Columbus area in Ohio. They bought their house in Columbus in March 2010 for $233,000. Today, the home is worth around $400,000.

After identifying as an agnostic for much of his life, Sanger embraced Christianity in the 2020s. In 2025, he announced his involvement with the Anglican Church in North America.

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