How Jeff built the fortune
Yass built his wealth in two stages. The first was Susquehanna International Group, the trading and investment firm he co-founded with college friends in 1987. Susquehanna became one of the largest market makers in US stock options, earning small spreads on enormous numbers of trades, and later expanded into equities, exchange-traded funds, bonds and crypto trading. Yass is reported to own a large share of the private partnership, which shares its profits among a small group of founders and partners.
The second stage came from venture investing. In 2012 Susquehanna's investment arm put money into ByteDance, a young Chinese startup that went on to create the news app Toutiao and later TikTok and its Chinese twin Douyin. The firm added to its position in later rounds, and Yass is reported to hold a personal interest in the stake. As ByteDance grew into one of the world's most valuable private companies, that investment came to account for a large portion of his fortune.
Because neither Susquehanna nor ByteDance is listed, the value of his holdings depends on private market estimates. The future of TikTok's US operations, which were subject to a forced sale law passed in 2024, has been an important factor in those estimates.
Companies and holdings
Susquehanna is headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia, and employs thousands of people across offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Its main activities include:
- Options and equity market making on exchanges around the world
- Quantitative and proprietary trading
- SIG Asia and other venture arms, which invest in technology startups in China and elsewhere
- Susquehanna Growth Equity, which backs software and internet businesses
The firm is known for training its traders in probability through games of poker, an approach that reflects Yass's own background. Yass also holds investments in a range of private companies through Susquehanna's venture funds. Over the past decade Susquehanna has also built a trading desk for cryptocurrencies and related products, applying the same market making methods it uses for options and shares.
Early life and career
Jeffrey Yass was born in 1958 and grew up in Queens, New York, the son of an accountant. He studied economics at the State University of New York at Binghamton, graduating in 1979, and spent much of his time there playing poker and studying the mathematics of betting, including at horse racing tracks.
After college he worked briefly as an options trader on the floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, where he applied probability models to price options at a time when such methods were still uncommon among floor traders. In 1987 he and several friends from Binghamton, including Arthur Dantchik, founded Susquehanna. The firm started on the trading floor in Philadelphia and grew rapidly as electronic trading spread through the 1990s and 2000s. He has remained a managing director of the firm for decades and continues to be involved in its trading business.
Philanthropy and public life
Yass is best known in public life for his political giving. He is one of the largest donors to Republican and libertarian causes in the United States, with a particular focus on school choice, including vouchers and charter schools, and he has funded groups that support candidates aligned with those views. He has served on the board of the libertarian Cato Institute.
His combination of large political donations and a financial interest in ByteDance has drawn scrutiny. When US lawmakers debated forcing a sale or ban of TikTok, critics and news reports questioned whether his donations influenced the positions taken by some politicians on the app. The debate over the app's future continued well beyond the 2024 law.
His charitable work follows a similar theme. The Yass Prize, launched in 2021 through the Center for Education Reform, awards large sums to schools and education programs that it judges to be innovative. He and his wife, Janine, have also given to universities, including Binghamton, and to health and community organizations in the Philadelphia area. Yass gives very few interviews and keeps his family life out of the public eye.