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He sold the company for $1.6bn, but he had a 10% stake. So his stake was worth $160m. He kept $100m. So he gave away $60m.
He did not give away a billion dollars. The article headline and the article itself is written in such a way that it arguably obscures the facts and confuses.
It's great he gave away $60m but it's got little to nothing to do with his opinion that he doesn't believe in billionaires; including that in the headline makes it seem like he gave away a billion dollars.
Good for him tbh, being a billionare WILL slowly corrode your mind and soul
Thats fucked up, why sell it? Give it back to the workers.
Sell it, keep $100M, distribute $1,500M to the employees who built the company with you.
...sit on the beach with your former employees as just people, discussing who has the cutest little umbrella in their drink and laughing at the stock value of the global conglomerate that bought a business that no longer has employees.
No, just distribute ownership amongst the workers. Keep a majority share if youre worried they arent responsible enough.
I guess it just depends on the scope. Since we were talking about giving way over a billion, I was envisioning the employees being set for life and having no concern for the continued operation of the business.
If we're talking about thousands of people, then I guess either option is pretty sweet. Either you keep your same job but now have equity and control, or you keep your same job under new ownership but see an extra $500,000 cash just drop into your checking account.
I took a look at the article and I got no impression of the employee count, but the dude who sold the company seems like the rare ultra-rich startup CEO business owner who is somehow based as fuck.
It sounds like starting companies is just what he likes doing, and/or is driven to do. I have to admit I'm a little jealous because imagine being a decent person, and first being told you have no rent or bills ever again, and then being given 1,500 Million Dollars to just give to people and causes you care about. That would be off-the-charts fun and rewarding.
(edit to add: the article may have been written in a misleading way such that he gave away less than half the money rather than over 90%, so maybe he's not quite so based. Still way ahead of the pack. Something I have often said is that in order to become a billionaire, you have to be the kind of person who can have $100M and still put in overtime because you aren't satisfied. It sounds like this guy at least works because he wants to and is thinking in the right direction)
Article snippet:
The 48-year-old is now building his third startup, a supply-chain emissions data company called Scope3. Still, he claims you’ll never catch him joining the billionaires club. “I will never be that wealthy. Even if Scope3 is immensely successful, we will give that money away.”
Sounds good
Put it in the bank and live off the interest
I saw a meme or something a while back that said to eliminate billionaires, every cent over 999 million should be taxed at 100%, we could give them a little plaque that says you won capitalism and they'd still have more money than anyone could spend in a single lifetime.
I've said stuff like that before, but I bet we can do even better. You don't just tax the extra money they make and be done. You publicize the great things the money does, and you give the people awards, titles, and attention in whatever way seems effective.
So maybe next year AWS keeps growing like crazy and Jeff Bezos's yearly "donation" is like 30 Billion dollars. He never sees that money, yet he still lives a billionaire lifestyle. The government uses that money to have schools offer every child in the country three hot nutritious meals per day, and some hallway in DC gets a plaque that says Jeff Bezos: Savior of the Children and the Future of American Brainpower. We all win in the ways we care about.
If it's ok for companies to psychologically manipulate and/or physically harm people in pursuit of profit, then it's ok for we the people to use the bottomless narcissism and ambition of the CEO class as an energy source.
Well that's certainly nicer than how the French handled it
why didn't he pay a bunch of that to the employees?
Because that's against how the system works. Shareholders can and will sue your company if you don't maximise profits. I honestly do not believe that we will achieve an acceptable distribution of wealth under capitalism.
That's a certainty as equitable distribution of wealth is diametrically opposed to the fundamental working of the capitalist system.
There's nothing wrong with billionaires in themselves, that'd be stupid. A billion's js a number slowly losing it's value as time goes on. It's how the money's acquired that matters.
A lot and overwhelming amt of billionaires in places like america make their money thru fistfucking their entire country and the destruction of society, but they don't notice money's just a number, a value and once that society's destroyed you can't eat money. Like I said nothing wrong with making money but it depends on how you make it.
Most billionaires make their money from coming out of the right womb.
Which is why inheritance tax is a thing even tho most find ways to avoid it.
As long as they pay their dues, instead of leaving us plebs to run their own state for them, which granted a lot of them don't, idrc. I want to make P's as much as anyone else but if the game's rigged against my favour we need to change the game.
Same way how in sport people win and lose, that's not the issue, but the game has to be fair, we can't allow doping, the playing field has to be even.
Soft disagree. I think even numerical wealth past a certain number is a sign of, at best, incoherent markets.
$100 million invested into dividend stock would gross him $1-5 million per year. About 1/3 of that will be paid in taxes, depending on what kind of dividends those are.
Me personally, I think I'd be happy with $10 million but I guess you get hungry when there's a lot of food in front of you.
Depends if you want rich people play money or just comfy people play money.
Also if you want to say buy a beach front house in california or a nice mountain home in Colorado. That alone can run you a few millions dollars upfront not to mention a the on going costs.
100m is honestly not a lot of money if you plan to not for for the next handful of decades and want to actually enjoy a rich life style.
10 mill will put you in a nice middle class home and keep you living a middle class life style for the same length of time.
Wealth to life style scales pretty well from 10 to 100 million dollars when your looking at a 35 year span.
In the US, the middle class generally encompasses households earning between two-thirds and double the national median income. For 2023, the median household income was $77,719, putting the middle class range between roughly $52,000 and $155,000.
now we have income vs earned/taxed 10mm.
155k pa puts you in the 22% federal tax bracket, since it's progressive let's assume 16% tax over all your income, this leaves you with 140k. and this is the upper end of the middle class. not just somewhere within.
if you just spend your 10mm at 140k pa it would last 71 years. okay, inflation is a bitch, but still ...
if you put it in some ETF you usually beat inflation with about 8.5% pa, which is taxable I guess. but it's only the gain you pay tax on off course.
so if you make 8.5% of 10mm and lose 3% to inflation, and tax 16% on the remaining gains you are left with 3.9% (=390k) after taxes pa to all eternity.
so unless you assume all variables worst case (living in most expensive city, getting divorced every year etc) I'd call 10mm way above middle class
and these numbers are fur 10mm, not 100.
Good for him.
Raise the taxes, remove the cap on FICA contributions, implement universal healthcare.
I love the sentiment but want to make sure it's understood that M4A would cost less, not more, than what we have today. The US government already spends more per citizen on healthcare than most governments with universal programs. The money just doesn't go to healthcare, it pays for profits and unnecessary overhead (like CEO salaries) at insurance companies, physician networks, hospitals, and medical suppliers.
The US government already spends more per citizen on healthcare than most governments with universal programs. The money just doesn’t go to healthcare
Then the US is nor spending that money per citizen, now is it?
"Per citizen" doesn't imply that the money ia going to each citizens. It nust means "total spent divided by the number of citizens".
Should have shared the money with the workers who built the company into a $1.6B valuation and worth acquisition.
Jesus Christ, it's never good enough for you, why even bother trying.
That's correct, there's no way to be the good guy in a system like this. All you can do is try
Just because he gave it away, doesn't remove his responsibility for how he "earned" it.
....by working hard for it?
Just a general reminder to anyone to use a site like Charity Navigator to find good causes to donate to.
Seems to be only American
Because most other Western countries have social security networks paid for by taxes, which are infinitely more efficient than the temporary bandaid which is charity.
How many more people/companies do we need to see doing this before we see change?
I am praising the action not the individual :)
I reserve my praises until I learn how exactly he gave away the money. Family-controlled foundations that only do political lobbing while avoiding taxes are a thing .
I wasn't able to find details with a quick search, but it sounds like it wasn't his own foundation:
After the AppNexus sale, O’Kelley and his wife carefully chose which causes to support. Their donations focus on education, social justice, technology access, and healthcare initiatives.
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2025/08/could-you-give-away-1-5-billion-like-this-ceo/
Perhaps the only good billionaire is one who isn't.
Perhaps the only good billionaire is one who isn’t.
Duh
When a billionaire gives money away, it's usually to their own charity, and it's to avoid paying taxes. Of course it sounds good to say they gave it away but it reality, they give it to a charity they fully control.
Or to reinvent their image, and not be look upon as a terrible person. Aka, gates
Basically he paid the cost of buying the Benevolent Nerd Dad image when you're primarily known for running a company with some of the most anti-competitive practices ever around.