Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American billionaire business magnate best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders and board members. As of June 2023, Brin is the 9th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $107 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Brin emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki‘s garage in Menlo Park.
Early life and education
Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in the Soviet Union,[4] to Russian Jewish parents, Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University (MSU). His father is a retired mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a researcher at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center.[7][8]
The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey’s paternal grandmother. In 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, Mikhail Brin announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result, his father was “promptly fired”. For related reasons, his mother had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country
The Brin family lived in Vienna and Paris while Mikhail Brin secured a teaching position at the University of Maryland with help from Anatole Katok. During this time, the Brin family received support and assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979.
Brin attended elementary school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, encouraged him to learn mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Maryland. In September 1990, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland, where he received his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Computer Science in 1993 with honors in computer science and mathematics at the age of 19. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, the developers of Mathematica.
Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, receiving an M.S. in computer science in 1995. As of 2008, he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.
Overview
Brin is a co-founder of Alphabet, the holding company that owns Google, the world’s largest search-engine operator. The Mountain View, California-based company was set-up in 1998 and reported revenue of $283 billion in 2022. The group’s divisions include Gmail, Android and video sharing service YouTube.
The majority of Brin’s fortune is derived from a stake in Alphabet, the parent company of Google, the world’s largest search engine, according to Net Market Share.
The billionaire owns both Class B and Class C shares, giving him an aggregate stake of about 6% of the business, according to a May 2023 filing. Brin’s Class B shares don’t trade and are valued using current market prices for the company’s Class A shares. They’re convertible into the publicly traded shares on a one-for-one basis, according to Google’s proxy. He owns about 367 million Class C shares, which are also publicly traded, according to the May 2023 filing.
Since the company’s 2004 initial offering, the billionaire has sold shares valued at more than $10 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of these share sales, market performance, charitable giving and taxes.
This net worth calculation uses an investment allocation favoring venture funds and clean technology, which is in line with the billionaire’s public comments about his investments.
No response was received to requests for comment on Brin’s net worth e-mailed to Google’s press office.
Milestones
- 1973 Sergey Brin is born in Moscow.
- 1979 At the age of six, emigrates from the Soviet Union with his parents.
- 1993 Begins his studies at Stanford after landing a graduate fellowship.
- 1996 Starts a research project on Internet searches with Larry Page.
- 1998 Formally incorporates Google after securing $100,000 in financing.
- 2001 Steps down as Google chairman; becomes president of technology.
- 2004 Google has an initial public offering at $85 a share.
- 2015 Alphabet holding company structure is announced.
