Carlos Slim Helu


Carlos Slim Helu is a Mexican entrepreneur and businessman involved in a varied group of companies that include telecommunications, retail, banking and insurance, technology, and auto parts manufacturing businesses. He is the wealthiest Mexican man, the richest Latin American, and one of the top ten richest men in the world.Carlos Slim HelĂș was born on the 28th of January, 1940 in Mexico City. His father Yusef Salim Haddad and mother Linda Helu were of Lebanese decent. Carlos was the 5th of 6 children. He studied engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.The financial success that Slim Helu has achieved has been from finding undervalued companies and making them profitable. Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) was acquired during a privatization period in 1990 of the Mexican government. Carlos was criticized for raising phone call costs soon after purchasing the business, but he went on to improve phone services in Mexico with the company offering local and long distance calls, mobile phone services, Internet services, and a telephone directory. "It's not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and "compacting" things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don't believe in having big corporate infrastructures." Carlos Slim HeluCarlos Slim Helu has been referred to as the "Warren Buffett of Latin America", but he thinks of himself as an operator of companies, rather than just an investor (like Buffett). Even though he has admitted to having very poor computer skills, he sees the Internet and technology as a major growth area in his group of businesses. He owns the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Mexico and had one of the largest in the United States of America with his acquisition of Prodigy. Slim also owns the major computer retailer CompUSA, with more than 200 retail stores throughout the USA and Puerto Rico."Technology is going to transform people's lives and society everywhere in the world. My main task is to understand what's going on and try to see where we can fit in." Carlos Slim Helu In 2005 Forbes business magazine estimated Carlos Slim Helu's net worth to be $23.8 billion American dollars, making him the 4th richest person in the world.In 2006 Carlos Slim Helu was ranked as the third richest man in the world with an estimated $30 billion in assets.In 2007 the Mexican billionaire remained in third position but increased his wealth dramatically to an estimated $49 billion.Update : In June of 2007 it was reported that the wealth of Carlos Slim Helu increased to an estimated $67.8 billion, making him the richest man in the world. This puts Carlos Slim ahead of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Read more about Carlos Slim being the Richest Man in the World.

Gordon E. Moore

Chairman Emeritus of the board
Gordon E. Moore is the retired chairman and CEO of Intel Corporation. Moore co-founded Intel in 1968, serving initially as executive vice president. He became president and CEO in 1975 and held that post until elected chairman and CEO in 1979. He remained CEO until 1987 and was named chairman emeritus in 1997.
Moore is widely known for "Moore's Law," in which in 1965 he predicted that the number of components the industry would be able to place on a computer chip would double every year. In 1975, he updated his prediction to once every two years. It has become the guiding principle for the semiconductor industry to deliver ever-more-powerful chips while decreasing the cost of electronics.
Moore earned a bachelor's in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. He was born in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 1929.
He is a director of Gilead Sciences Inc., a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers. Moore also serves on the board of trustees of the California Institute of Technology. He received the National Medal of Technology in 1990 and the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from George W. Bush in 2002.

Jen-Hsun Huang – Co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer

Jen-Hsun Huang co-founded NVIDIA Corporation in April 1993 and has served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors since its inception. Under his leadership, NVIDIA has become the world leader in programmable graphics processing technologies and one of the semiconductor industry's largest fabless companies. Mr. Huang serves on the RAND Corporation's Board of Trustees and is a member of the Committee of 100, an organization that addresses issues concerning the Chinese-American community and U.S.-China relations. In 2004, the Fabless Semiconductor Association honored Mr. Huang with the prestigious Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award, which recognizes a leader who has made exceptional contributions to driving the development, innovation, growth, and long-term opportunities of the fabless semiconductor industry. Additionally, Mr. Huang is a recipient of the Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award from the University of Southern California and was named an Alumni Fellow by Oregon State University. Prior to founding NVIDIA, Mr. Huang held engineering, marketing, and general management positions at LSI Logic, and was a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices. Mr. Huang holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Oregon State University and an M.S.E.E. degree from Stanford University.

Larry Page


Larry Page is the cofounder of Google and is currently the President of Products of for Google Inc.Lawrence E. Page was born in 1973 in Lansing, Michigan to parents Carl Vincent Page, who is a professor of computer science at Michigan University and Gloria Page, who is a computer programming teacher at Michigan University. With his parents guidance from the beginning Page was destined to be successful in the IT industry in one way or another. After graduating from East Lansing High School he studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan and went on to study a Masters degree at Stanford University. While studying at Stanford University, Page was introduced to Sergey Brin. The two did not start out as friends, seeming to disagree on most topics of conversation, but eventually came across a subject that had been a great interest to them both. That topic was Retrieving information from large data sets. The pair later wrote what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper called "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". The paper has since become the tenth most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University. Soon after they started working on a project that later became the Google search engine. After trying to sell the idea failed, they wrote up a business plan and brought in a total initial investment of almost $1 million to start their own company. In September 1998 Google Inc opened in Menlo Park, California. The company grew so quickly and gained so many employees’ a few office relocations were made due to lack of space, with Google Inc finally settled in its current place at Mountain View, California. Over the next few years headed by Larry and Sergey Google made many innovations and added to its list of products and employee’s (nearly 5000 by 2006). By October 2004 Google announced their first quarterly results as a public offered company, with record revenues of $805.9 million. As of 2005 Page has been estimated to be worth US$12 billion and is sixteenth in Forbes 400 list and making him the 27th richest person in the world. In 2002, Larry was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) for the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and together with Co-Founder Sergey Brin, Larry was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004. He is a trustee on the board of the X PRIZE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.

Bill Gates


Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in the world. He is cofounder of one of the most recognized brands in the computer industry with nearly every desk top computer using at least one software program from Microsoft. According to the Forbes magazine, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and has held the number one position for many years.Gates was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington USA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattle attorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was a school teacher and chairperson of the United Way charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortable upbringing, with Gates being able to attend the exclusive secondary "Lakeside School".Bill Gates started studying at Harvard University in 1973 where he met up with Paul Allen. Gates and Allen worked on a version of the programming language BASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the first microcomputer available). He did not go on to graduate from Harvard University as he left in his junior year to start what was to become the largest computer software company in the world; Microsoft Corporation.Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation "To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." Microsoft Mission StatementAfter dropping out of Harvard Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen set about revolutionizing the computer industry. Gates believed there should be a computer on every office desk and in every home. In 1975 the company Micro-soft was formed, which was an abbreviation of microcomputer software. It soon became simply "Microsoft"® and went on to completely change the way people use computers. Microsoft helped to make the computer easier to use with its developed and purchased software, and made it a commercial success. The success of Microsoft began with the MS-DOS computer operating system that Gates licensed to IBM. Gates also set about protecting the royalties that he could acquire from computer software by aggressively fighting against all forms of software piracy, effectively creating the retail software market that now exists today. This move was quite controversial at the time as it was the freedom of sharing that produced much innovation and advances in the newly forming software industry. But it was this stand against software piracy, that was to be central in the great commercial success that Microsoft went on to achieve.Bill Gates CriticismWith his great success in the computer software industry also came many criticisms. With his ambitious and aggressive business philosophy, Gates or his Microsoft lawyers have been in and out of courtrooms fighting legal battles almost since Microsoft began. The Microsoft monopoly sets about completely dominating every market it enters through either acquisition, aggressive business tactics or a combination of them. Many of the largest technology companies have fought legally against the actions of Microsoft, including Apple Computer, Netscape, Opera, WordPerfect, and sun Microsystems.Bill Gates Net Worth With an estimated wealth of $53 billion in 2006, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he should be starting to get used to the number spot as he has been there from the mid-ninties up until now. The famous investor Warren Buffett is gaining on Gates though with an estimated $46 billion in 2006.Microsoft hasn't just made Bill Gates very wealthy though. According to the Forbes business magazine in 2004 Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder was the 5th richest man in the world with an estimated $21 billion. While Bill Gates' long time friend and Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer was the 19th richest man in the world at $12.4 billion.See more information the Bill Gates Net Worth page.Bill Gates PhilanthropyBeing the richest man in the world has also enabled Gates to create one of the world's largest charitable foundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $28 billion, with donations totaling more than $1 billion every year. The foundation was formed in 2000 after merging the "Gates Learning Foundation" and "William H. Gates Foundation". Their aim is to "bring innovations in health and learning to the global community".Bill Gates continues to play a very active role in the workings of the Microsoft Company, but has handed the position of CEO over to Steve Ballmer. Gates now holds the positions of "Chairman" and "Chief Software Architect". He has started that he plans to take on fewer responsibilities at Microsoft and will eventually devote all his time to the Foundation.In 2006, the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett pledged to give much of his vast fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates Receives a KBEIn March 2005 William H. Gates received an "honorary" knighthood from the queen of England. Gates was bestowed with the KBE Order (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services in reducing poverty and improving health in the developing countries of the world.After the privately held ceremony in Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Gates commented on the recognition.."I am humbled and delighted. I am particularly pleased that this honor helps recognize the real heroes our foundation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) supports to improve health in poor countries. Their incredible work is helping ensure that one day all people, no matter where they are born, will have the same opportunity for a healthy life, and I'm grateful to share this honor with them."The KBE Order of the British Empire is the second highest Order given out, but it is only an honorary knighthood as only citizens that are British or a part of the Commonwealth receive the full Order. This means that Gates does not become Sir Bill Gates.Bill Gates lives near Lake Washington with his wife Melinda French Gates and their three children. Interests of Gates include reading, golf and playing bridge.