How Charles built the fortune
Simonyi's fortune traces back to a decision in 1981 to leave Xerox and join Microsoft, then a small company best known for programming languages. Bill Gates hired him to build an applications business, and Simonyi became the architect behind the company's first spreadsheet, Multiplan, and the early versions of Microsoft Word. He later oversaw work that led to Excel. As Microsoft grew into the dominant supplier of office software, the stock and options he had received as an early senior employee became extremely valuable.
He stayed at Microsoft for two decades, moving from product leadership into research on how programs are written. In 2002 he left to start Intentional Software, a company built around his idea that domain experts should be able to describe what software must do in their own terms, with the code generated from that description. Microsoft bought Intentional Software in 2017, and Simonyi returned to the company as part of the deal.
Much of his wealth therefore reflects long-term ownership of Microsoft shares rather than a single founding stake. He has also invested privately and holds a significant art collection.
His approach at Microsoft was sometimes described as a meta programming method, in which a lead designer writes detailed plans and less experienced programmers carry them out using strict conventions. That model helped Microsoft ship large applications quickly in the 1980s, when the company was competing with established rivals such as Lotus and WordPerfect, and it contributed to the success that made early staff shares so valuable.
Companies and holdings
Key parts of his career and holdings:
- Microsoft, where he led application development from 1981 and returned as a technical fellow after 2017
- Intentional Software, founded in 2002 and sold to Microsoft
- Xerox PARC, where in the 1970s he co-created Bravo, one of the first editors that showed text on screen as it would print
Within the programming world he is also known for Hungarian notation, a convention for naming variables by their type and purpose that spread widely through Microsoft's own code and developer documentation.
Early life and career
Charles Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, in September 1948. His father, Károly Simonyi, was a professor of electrical engineering, and as a teenager Charles gained access to one of the country's few computers, learning to program in machine code. At 17 he left Hungary for Denmark, where he worked on compilers at the computing firm Regnecentralen.
He moved to the United States in the late 1960s and earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley. At Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center he worked alongside Butler Lampson on Bravo, ideas that later shaped Word. He completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1977 with a thesis on managing large programming projects, before Gates recruited him to Microsoft.
The move to the United States came with a scholarship and work opportunities that allowed him to combine study with paid programming jobs. By the time he reached Xerox, he had more than a decade of practical experience with machines ranging from Soviet bloc computers to the most advanced research systems in California.
Philanthropy and public life
Simonyi has focused his giving on science and the arts. In 1995 he endowed a professorship at the University of Oxford for the public understanding of science, first held by the biologist Richard Dawkins. He has also funded a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, served on its board of trustees, and supported Seattle cultural institutions through the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences.
He drew wide public attention as a private space traveler. Through Space Adventures he flew to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz in 2007 and went back in 2009, becoming the first paying visitor to make two trips. He married Lisa Persdotter in 2008 and lives near Seattle.
He also built a substantial collection of modern art, including works by Roy Lichtenstein and Victor Vasarely, and his house in Medina, Washington, was designed partly as a gallery. Simonyi has spoken in public about the value of basic research and has supported science outreach as well as music in the Seattle area.