Steve Case Net Worth

What is Steve Case's Net Worth?

Steve Case is an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist who has a net worth of $1 billion. Steve Case is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of America Online (AOL). During the 1990s, he played a central role in bringing the internet into mainstream use, turning AOL into one of the most recognized brands in the world and one of the first major internet companies to achieve mass consumer adoption. Under his leadership, AOL pioneered innovations such as chat rooms, instant messaging, and easy-to-use online portals that helped millions of Americans log on for the first time.

Case began his career in marketing at Procter & Gamble and later worked at Pizza Hut before joining Quantum Computer Services, a small online gaming company that would soon be rebranded as America Online. He became CEO in 1991 and guided AOL through a period of extraordinary growth, overseeing its transformation from a niche service into a cultural phenomenon. By the late 1990s, AOL had more than 25 million subscribers and a market capitalization exceeding $200 billion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.

In 2000, Case engineered AOL's $165 billion merger with Time Warner, which was initially hailed as a groundbreaking union between old and new media. The merger, however, became one of the most infamous failures in corporate history after the dot-com crash and internal conflicts between the two companies. Case stepped down as CEO in 2003 and later left the board in 2005.

After leaving AOL, Case founded the investment firm Revolution LLC, through which he has backed high-growth startups including Zipcar, Sweetgreen, and DraftKings. Through his "Rise of the Rest" initiative, he has championed entrepreneurship across the country, advocating for investment in emerging innovation hubs beyond Silicon Valley and New York. He also co-founded the Case Foundation with his wife, Jean Case, focusing on philanthropy in health, education, and community development.

Early Life and Education

Steve Case was born on August 21, 1958, in Honolulu, in what was then the Territory of Hawaii, to parents Carol and Daniel. He has a brother named Jeff and a sister named Carin, and had another brother named Dan who passed away in 2002. Case was educated at the private Punahou School, from which he graduated in 1976. He went on to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, graduating in 1980 with a degree in political science.

Career Beginnings

During the two years following his college graduation, Case worked as an assistant brand manager at the Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. After that, he worked as a manager of new pizza marketing at the original Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kansas. In 1983, Case was introduced by his brother Dan to Control Video Corporation CEO Bill von Meister and was hired as a marketing consultant. Eventually, he became a full-time marketing employee.

Quantum Computer Services

Following the dissolution of Control Video Corporation, employee Jim Kimsey founded the online service company Quantum Computer Services. He became the CEO and hired Case as vice president of marketing. In 1987, Case was promoted to executive vice president. During his time at Quantum in the 80s, Case partnered with Marc Seriff to create the online service Quantum Link for the Commodore 64 home computer. A few years after that, the company began offering the PC Link online service for IBM computers and the AppleLink online service for Apple machines. Case also heavily promoted online interactive games and activities, including "Habitat," "Club Caribe," and "Quantum Space."

AOL

In 1991, Quantum Computer Services changed its name to America Online, or AOL, and merged its PC and Apple services under the new name. That year, Case took over from Kimsey as the CEO of the company. By 1994, AOL had amassed one million subscribers. The service became a pioneer in the advent of social media due to its emphasis on chat rooms, forums, and instant messaging. This helped drive its success in its early years, with its user base growing to ten million by the end of the 90s and peaking at 26.7 million in 2002.

Not everything at AOL was a success. In 2001, Case and Gerald M. Levin orchestrated a merger with media conglomerate Time Warner that ended up being a debacle on account of the dot-com bubble burst and various accounting scandals. Case ultimately resigned as chairman of AOL in early 2003, but remained on the board of directors for about three years after that. The epic failure of the AOL Time Warner merger became the subject of Nina Munk's 2005 book "Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner."

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Revolution

Following his resignation from AOL, Case co-founded the venture capital firm Revolution with Donn Davis and Tige Savage. Based in Washington, DC, the company's goal is to fund entrepreneurs who are working to transform legacy industries outside of the main coastal tech hubs in the US. Revolution operates three major investment funds: Revolution Ventures, which focuses on early-stage technology companies; Revolution Growth, which focuses on mid-range consumer technology businesses; and Revolution Places, which focuses on real estate and hospitality. Through these arms, the company has made investments in such notable companies as Zipcar, sweetgreen, DraftKings, Optoro, and RunKeeper, among many others.

Philanthropy and Advocacy

In his philanthropic work, Case is the chairman of the Case Foundation, which he co-founded with his wife Jean in 1997. The Foundation invests in individuals and nonprofits that seek to connect people and foster civic engagement. In 2011, Case became a Citizen Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. Among his other positions, he served as a co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Democracy Project. Case is also a prominent advocate for immigration reform, believing that immigrants are critical to the health of America's entrepreneurial culture and economy.

Books

Case's first book was "The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future," which was published in 2016. A New York Times bestseller, it explores how innovations in technology are transforming the Internet and how we think about work. Case released his second book, "The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream," in 2022.

Personal Life

In 1985, Case wed Joanne Barker, whom he had met in college. They had three children together before divorcing in 1996. Two years after that, Case married former AOL executive Jean Villanueva. The couple has two children.

Hawaiian Real Estate

Steve Case controls tens of thousands of acres in his home state of Hawaii, including a controlling interest in Maui Land & Pineapple Company. He also has a controlling interest in the historic agricultural site Grove Farm, which he acquired in a controversial transaction that resulted in years of litigation launched by the previous owners.

Merrywood Estate

In 2001, Steve Case purchased one of the most historic estates in the Washington, D.C. area: a Georgian-style mansion known as Merrywood. Located on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River in McLean, Virginia, the 23,000-square-foot residence has long been regarded as one of the capital region's most prestigious private homes. Built in 1919, Merrywood has served for more than a century as a gathering place for America's political, media, and business elite.

The property's legacy stretches back generations. Its most famous resident was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, who spent much of her childhood there in the 1930s and 1940s after her mother, Janet Lee Bouvier, married Hugh D. Auchincloss, a Standard Oil heir. The estate became a symbol of the refined social world that helped shape the future First Lady's upbringing. In the decades that followed, Merrywood changed hands among several influential families, including broadcast journalist Nancy Dickerson and her husband Claude Wyatt Dickerson, parents of journalist John Dickerson. Their ownership in the 1960s and 1970s turned the home into a hub for Washington's social and political scene.

Case acquired Merrywood for approximately $24.5 million, setting a new record for residential real estate in the Washington area at the time. The property had previously been owned by Carlyle Group co-founder William E. Conway Jr., who purchased it just a year earlier. Spanning seven manicured acres, the estate features nine bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, formal gardens, a tennis court, an indoor pool, and panoramic river views.

During his two decades of ownership, Case and his wife, Jean, preserved the mansion's historic character while updating it for modern living. In 2018, the Cases sold Merrywood to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $43 million—once again breaking the Washington-area home price record. The sale underscored both the enduring prestige of Merrywood and Case's place among the region's most prominent business figures.Here's a video tour:

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