A Midwestern Town Is Pumping Out Tech Billionaires

When you think of tech billionaires, you probably think of Silicon Valley. California in general has been the spot for U.S. tech companies. It's where Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others set up their headquarters.

But multiple tech billionaires grew up in the same Midwestern city: St. Louis, Missouri.

Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square co-founder/CEO); Jim McKelvey (Square co-founder); and Sam Altman (OpenAI co-founder/CEO) all grew up around St. Louis and are now currently billionaires through different tech endeavors.

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Dorsey was just 15 years old when he met McKelvey, the oldest of the three at 57 years old. McKelvey hired him as an intern in 1993.

The two continued to work together and ultimately founded Square in 2009 — now called Block Inc SQ — which is now worth more than $40 billion. 

Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006 and grew the company to one of the largest social media companies in the world before selling the company to Elon Musk in 2022.

Altman joined Y Combinator in 2011 and eventually co-founded OpenAI with Musk, Netflix founder Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston, Ilya Sutskever and others.

Net Worth

According to Forbes, Dorsey is worth $4.8 billion. McKelvey is worth $1.6 billion. Altman is not on Forbes’ Billionaires list yet, but if OpenAI continues to grow, it will not be surprising if he is.

But, the richest tech billionaire from St. Louis? You may have never even heard of him. David Steward founded World Wide Technologies in 1990 and it is currently the largest black-owned business in the U.S. The company provides cloud computing services, cybersecurity and more.

According to Forbes, Steward is currently worth $6 billion, making him the richest tech billionaire from St. Louis. 

Image by Erdenebayar Bayansan from Pixabay