Michael Saylor Net Worth

Key takeaways:

• Forbes has listed Michael Saylor’s 2024 net worth as approximately USD 1.2 billion
• The American billionaire made his name in the late 80s after founding and running the tech company MicroStrategy
• Saylor is a huge Bitcoin advocate and regularly speaks on the subject of cryptocurrency via his social media accounts

MicroStrategy is one of the most well-known businesses in both the cryptocurrency and broader tech space. At its helm is Michael Saylor, a US-based entrepreneur who leveraged this small startup into a multi-national behemoth. Both MicroStrategy and Saylor himself invest in Bitcoin (and other digital currencies) which plays a big role in his billionaire status. This article will explore Michael Saylor’s assets to determine which factors influence his net wealth and how it has fluctuated over time.

Is Michael Saylor A Billionaire?

According to Forbes, Michael Saylor will be a billionaire in 2023. He is the 1,818th richest billionaire in the world and sits at number 4 on the crypto rich list (however this ranking is outdated by several years). Other sources suggest Saylor’s net worth may actually be greater than the $1.2 billion figure quoted by Forbes as 2023, while a couple claim his fortune to be around the $500 million mark. Given the solid performance of BTC and MicroStrategy over the past 6 months, it’s likely that Michael Saylor is a billionaire.

Assuming that Forbes’ estimate is correct, a $200 million loss could knock Saylor off the billionaire’s list. Such an event isn’t impossible considering how heavily his portfolio is exposed to BTC. A 10-20% drop in BTC may be enough to turn Saylor into a multi-millionaire, rather than a billionaire – but for now, he sits in the exclusive ten-digit club alongside other Bitcoin millionaires such as Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Mike Novogratz who have also amassed a significant net worth.

What Is The Net Worth Of Michael Saylor In 2024?

There are several sources we can track to try and determine Michael Saylor’s most up-to-date net worth. Forbes is perhaps the most reputable as the team uses an algorithm to determine the wealth of certain rich people on a day-to-day basis. According to this source, Michael Saylor’s net worth is approximately $1.2 billion USD – down 25% from the previous year.

However, other online sources suggest Saylor’s net worth is drastically different. Some claim his net worth to be around $3 billion as of 2024, while others have suggested he isn’t even a billionaire anymore (with a fortune of $500 million). The validity of these claims is hard to determine, however, based on the performance of BTC and MicroStrategy over the past 12 months it is likely that Forbes’ estimate is the closest to the mark.

What Is The Net Worth Of Michael Saylor Over Time?

Michael Saylor (@saylor on Twitter) has been a wealthy man for a very long time. In fact, it is believed he reached his peak net worth in the early 2000s during what is now called the “dot-com bubble”. This was a period of a couple of years where the internet was starting to see widespread adoption and investors went all in on the sector. This inflated the value of several companies well past their actual worth (including MicroStrategy), resulting in a massive peak and trough in the stock price of several tech businesses.

At the absolute peak of hysteria, Michael Saylor lost $6 billion USD in a single day. All up, it’s estimated he lost $13 billion due to the dot-com bubble. However, thanks to savvy personal and institutional investments in Bitcoin, Saylor re-invented himself and his company and returned to the world of billionaires. Unfortunately, data for Michael Saylor’s actual net worth is quite sparse and can only be retrieved for certain years.

Year	Net Worth (in USD)
2000	$7-13 billion (reports vary)
2001	$1 billion
2020	At least $175 million
2021	$2.3 billion
2022	$1.6 billion
2023	$1.2 billion

How Much Bitcoin Does Michael Saylor Own?

Michael Saylor may have a diverse portfolio of digital currencies and traditional equities, but there’s no denying the center of his attention is Bitcoin. In fact, he stood down as CEO of his company MicroStrategy Inc. to “focus on Bitcoin”.

On a personal level, Saylor has publicly stated that he holds 17,732 BTC at an average purchase price of $9,882. This statement occurred in October 2020, and a year later Saylor confirmed that he had not sold any of his holdings. It is quite possible that Saylor has altered his Bitcoin portfolio in some manner since, but he has not made this public. Based on September 2023’s Bitcoin value and his original 2020 statement, Michael Saylor’s personal BTC portfolio is worth at least $474.62 million. This represents a profit of nearly $300 million, or 170%.

On the business side of things, Michael Saylor has also invested heavily in BTC. Although Saylor isn’t as exposed to the price movements of Bitcoin owned by MicroStrategy, it still no doubt affects his net worth significantly. In July 2020, Saylor announced his company was moving away from holding cash reserves and intended to invest in a commodity like gold or Bitcoin. A month later they used $250m USD to purchase 21,454 BTC.

MicroStrategy continued to incrementally add BTC to their portfolios, with a $175 million investment in September 2020 and another $50 million in December. Finally, the team incurred debt and sold off a significant portion of its convertible notes to increase its holdings of Bitcoin to over $1 billion USD.

As of April 2023, it is estimated that MicroStrategy has purchased 140,000 BTC at an average price of $29,083. Based on Bitcoin’s most recent price, this means the company has actually lost money on its BTC investments. This is largely due to MicroStrategy continuing to add BTC to its portfolio during the 2021 bull run, where the business purchased $414m worth of Bitcoin at an average price of $59,187.

How Did Michael Saylor Build His Wealth?

Michael Saylor began his career in 1987 as a software engineer and consultant, where he would build computer models to assist businesses in tracking changes in market demographics and other factors. Using the funds and name he made for himself in his early career, Saylor co-founded MicroStrategy in 1989 when he was just 24. The early days of MicroStrategy revolved around data mining and software for business intelligence.

The company got its first big break in 1992 when Saylor secured a $10 million contract ($21m adjusted for inflation) with McDonald’s. The success continued until 1998 when MicroStrategy decided to go public. On its first day of trading, the stock price – initially set at $12, doubled. Saylor himself owned about 40,000 stock units of MicroStrategy which quickly vaulted his net worth into the tens of millions. As the dot-com bubble unfolded around him, the value of MicroStrategy and Saylor’s share of it continued to inflate. By 2000 he was the richest man in Washington, with a net worth of over $7 billion.

However, Saylor was de-throned rather brutally just a year later. The businessman (along with other MicroStrategy execs) was investigated for incorrect reporting of financials since taking the company public. Saylor was fined $350,000 and had to yield $8.3 million of his public fortune. As a result of the negative press alongside the dot-com bubble bursting, Saylor’s net worth sunk by $6 billion and hovered in the hundreds of millions for the following few years.

Saylor managed to regain billionaire status through a series of savvy investments in Bitcoin through 2019-20. He spent $175 million to purchase ~17k BTC, yielding a profit of over $300 million as of 2023. His early days with MicroStrategy laid the foundation for his ultimate entrance into the cryptocurrency market and the reclamation of a 10-digit net worth.

Factors That Affect Michael Saylor’s Net Worth

Michael Saylor is no longer the CEO of the company he founded, MicroStrategy, but he is still a prominent executive in charge of investment strategies. He likely still has significant exposure to MicroStrategy, through personal holdings in its public stock and salary. If MicroStrategy performs well in any given financial year, both its stock price and the salary it can afford may increase – and vice versa for poor years.

However, by far the biggest factor that affects Michael Saylor’s net worth is the price movements of Bitcoin. For starters, we know that the billionaire likely still has at least 17k BTC, worth around $450 million. For context, a small 1% drop in the price of Bitcoin would cause Saylor’s fortune to fall by more than $4.5 million. However, his company also owns approximately 140,000 BTC valued at over $3 billion.

This means that value fluctuations of BTC not only affect Saylor’s personal crypto portfolio but also the performance and cash reserves of his company. A bad year for Bitcoin could have an influence on MicroStrategy’s day-to-day operations due to limiting their potential for expenditure. Indeed, the inverse is true too – MicroStrategy’s best stock performance since the dot-com bubble occurred as a result of BTC’s massive price run through 2021.

About Michael Saylor

Michael Saylor is an American entrepreneur, software engineer, and investor. He is best known for founding and being the CEO of the tech company MicroStrategy Inc. and his heavy investment into Bitcoin. While he stepped down from the top role at his company in 2022, his prominence in the crypto industry has only grown as he turned his attention to Bitcoin trading.

Name	Michael Saylor
Date Of Birth	4 February 1965
Place Of Birth	Nebraska, USA
Net Worth	$1.2 billion
Source Of Wealth	Bitcoin, MicroStrategy Inc
Nationality	American
Profession	Software engineer, investor, business executive, entrepreneur

Early Life & Education

Michael Saylor was born in 1965 in Nebraska, United States. His father was an Air Force chief master sergeant, an occupation that informed much of Saylor’s early years. As a teenager, Saylor was heavily invested in piloting and became a prolific academic. He acquired a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he graduated with a double major in aeronautics and astronautics.

Unfortunately for Saylor, a previously undiagnosed medical condition stood in the way of him ever becoming a pilot. Quick to change tact, he secured a role with a computer modeling consultancy firm and never looked back.

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