Tag: larry page

Larry Page Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Larry Page, co-founder of Google.

Birth date: March 26, 1973

Birth place: Lansing, Michigan

Birth name: Lawrence Edward Page

Father: Carl Page, a computer science professor

Mother: Gloria Page

Marriage: Lucinda “Lucy” Southworth (December 2007-present)

Children: A son born in 2009 and another child born in 2011

Education: University of Michigan, B.S.E., 1995; Stanford University, M.S., 1998

Google is a play on the word googol, the term for the numeral one followed by 100 zeroes.

Page has a vocal cord condition that he says is responsible for his hoarser, softer speaking voice. He also has Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a disorder that causes inflammation of the thyroid gland.

1995 – Meets Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

1998 – Co-founds Google with Brin.

September 7, 1998 – Google is launched.

1998-2001 – CEO of Google.

2001-2011 – President of products at Google.

2010 – Kittyhawk, a flying car company, is founded by Sebastian Thrun with the backing of Page. On September 21, 2022, Kittyhawk announces that it plans to “wind down” operations.

April 4, 2011-October 2, 2015 – CEO of Google.

August 10, 2015 – Google announces a corporate restructuring, forming an umbrella company called Alphabet and naming Sundar Pichai as the new CEO to the core business of Google. Page will serve as Alphabet’s CEO and Brin will serve as president.

October 2, 2015 – Becomes CEO of Alphabet.

December 3, 2019 – Alphabet announces that Page and Brin are stepping down as CEO and president, respectively. The co-founders will continue to serve on Alphabet’s board of directors.

August 2021 – New Zealand government officials confirm that Page is a New Zealand resident following news that Page entered the country during border restrictions due to Covid-19. According to immigration officials, Page applied for residency in November 2020.

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March 13, 2024
Billionaire Yachts: Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin | Entrepreneur

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This article originally appeared on Business Insider.

A regular Jane celebrating a personal renaissance after a long-term relationship might commemorate the new era with an ankle tattoo of a spiritual saying. When you’re a billionaire, you could do it instead with a $500 million megayacht.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made waves in May riding around the roughly 127-meter “Koru,” a Māori term that may signify a fresh start, with his reported fiancée Lauren Sanchez. (In 2019, Bezos finalized his divorce from MacKenzie Scott, whom he was married to for 25 years).

Beyond the private planes occupying the hangars of billionaires, yachts have come to symbolize the highly private sites of leisure and networking reserved for the ultra-wealthy.

Tech billionaires like Bezos, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have all purchased their own mini vacation hubs at sea, decking their boats with amenities like gyms, spas, pools, nightclubs, and movie theaters.

For those wishing to experience life aboard these multi-million-dollar yachts, some are available to rent out for a few nights or weeks at a time. Late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s yacht can be booked for $2.2 million per week or more, according Bloomberg.

Chartering yachts owned by billionaires like Alphabet cofounder Sergey Brin has previously cost customers anywhere from $773,000 a week to $1.2 million.

It remains to be seen how these vessels will fare against the apparent Orca uprising.

Take a look at some of the yachts that have been owned by tech billionaires.

A mystery buyer bought a 414-foot superyacht that was once owned by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $278 million. Allen had the boat, which was named “Octopus,” built in 2003 for $200 million. Since the tech billionaire’s death in 2018, the boat had been listed for as much as $325 million.

Octopus in Canary Wharf, London, in 2012. Ki Price/Reuters Source: SuperYacht Times

The wealthy can book the yacht for a weekly rate of $2.2 million or more, through the luxury company Camper & Nicholsons, Bloomberg reported last year.

414ft luxury yacht ‘Octopus’ owned by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, is moored to fuel up at Ege Ports in Kusadasi district of Aydin, Turkey on April 27, 2015. Ibrahim Uzun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Sources: Bloomberg; Insider.

Amazon founder Bezos’ $500 million megayacht, the roughly 127-meter “Koru,” sparked attention in May for its artistic decor. A sculpture of a woman on the boat appeared to observers to be the likeness of Bezos’ reported fiancée Sanchez, who was also seen that month on the yacht sporting a large ring.

Jeff Bezos was spotted aboard his megayacht “Koru” in May. Lift Aircraft.

Even before its completion, “Koru” drew the ire of Dutch people vowing to hurl eggs at the boat if it would require a historic bridge in Rotterdam to be taken apart to let it through. An egg crisis was averted however, as the company making the ship found a less-irksome alternative.

View of the Koningshaven Bridge, known as De Hef in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Peter Dejong/AP

Bezos has long been interested in yachts. In 2019, he was spotted aboard entertainment mogul David Geffen’s superyacht.

David Geffen’s superyacht Flickr via BI

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison owns a 288-foot yacht named Musashi that he acquired in 2013. The yacht has several amenities, including an elevator, swimming pool, movie theater, and both an indoor and outdoor gym.

rulenumberone2/Flickr, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Source: Yacht Bible

Ellison has owned several superyachts over the years, including the Katana, the Ronin, and the Rising Sun.

Courtesy of Lurssen Source: Forbes.

The Oracle cofounder also has a knack for competitive yacht racing, and helped to found and back a racing team, called Oracle Team USA, in 2000. The team has found success and won several prestigious titles over the years.

Xaume Olleros/Getty Images Sport Source: Telegraph

Ellison previously owned a bigger, 454-foot yacht called Rising Sun, which was designed specifically for the CEO in 2005. That yacht reportedly has 82 rooms, a movie theater, a wine cellar, and a basketball court. However, Ellison sold off the Rising Sun to Geffen for a reported $300 million.

Kimberly White/Getty Images Source: Forbes, Boat International

Ellison’s boat, Musashi, is a sister ship to the yacht of another billionaire, former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. However, the yacht, named Fountainhead, is often mistaken for belonging to billionaire investor Mark Cuban. “The guy who owns the boat tells everyone that it’s mine,” Cuban told Page Six in 2016. “It’s so crazy … I don’t even own a boat.”

Mark Cuban. Steve Marcus/Reuters

Source: Page Six

Ellison’s yacht reportedly influenced the decision of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs to get a boat himself. However, Jobs never set foot on the boat — the yacht was commissioned in 2008, but wasn’t completed until 2012, a year after his death.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Source: Business Insider

When Jobs died in 2011, his yacht — along with his $14.1 billion fortune — was inherited by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of a social-impact nonprofit called the Emerson Collective. The 256-foot yacht is named Venus, and is worth $130 million.

AP Photo/Peter Dejong Source: Business Insider

Google’s billionaire cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are known to splurge. An Insider feature in December documented some of the trappings of their luxury, including planes and yachts.

Sergey Brin (left) and Larry Page. Getty / Michael Nagle

Source: Insider.

Page owned a yacht named Senses, a $45 million, 194-foot boat that he bought in 2011 from a New Zealand businessman. He’s since sold the yacht, Insider reported in 2021, a vessel that had a private beach club with a Jacuzzi and sun beds, both indoor and outdoor dining areas, and a helicopter pad. It’s unclear what other sea vessels he owns, though Insider has previously reported he might have another yacht.

Ari Helminen/Flickr, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Sources: Boat International; Insider.

Brin meanwhile owns a number of yachts and vessels including the 73-meter Dragonfly, and the 40-meter Butterfly, Insider reported in January.

Abell Point Marina/YouTube Source: Insider.

Dragonfly, the $80 million boat that has a movie-theater, shares a name with Google’s once-secret project to launch a censored search engine in China. Google said in 2019 it had officially terminated the project.

Eric Risberg/Associated Press Source: Insider, Forbes.

The former Google CEO picked up the Alfa Nero yacht for nearly $68 million in an auction in June, according to a Bloomberg report. The yacht had apparently been left amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the report.

Eric Schmidt REUTERS/Brian Snyder Source: Bloomberg.

For Skype cofounder Niklas Zennstrom, his interest in yachts skews toward racing and competitive sailing. Zennstrom has gone through a succession of boats all named Ran.

Co-Founder and CEO of Skype Technologies, United Kingdom Niklas Zennstroem listens during a plenary entitled ‘Digital 2.0:Powering a Creative Economy’ at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, AP Photo/Michel Euler

Source: CNN

The Ran VII yacht is among the most advanced of Zennstrom’s boats. The racing yacht uses electrical power, which Zennstrom has said makes it “lighter, less drag, quieter, and most importantly it is environmentally friendly.”

Carkeek Design Partners/YouTube Source: CNN

The 40-foot yacht has been meant to compete in regattas through the racing team owned by Zennstrom and his wife, Catherine. The Ran racing team launched in 2008, and has won some prestigious regattas.

The Ran racing team. Carkeek Design Partners/YouTube Source: CNN

Barry Diller, chairman of digital media company IAC, co-owns a $70 million yacht with his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Diane von Furstenberg, left, and Barry Diller. Scott Olson/Getty Images Source: Business Insider

The sailing yacht, named Eos, is 350 feet long with six bedrooms. The power couple has hosted many celebrities over the years — a few that have been spotted aboard Eos include model Karlie Kloss, actor Bradley Cooper, journalist Anderson Cooper, and singer Harry Styles.

snowwahine/YouTube Source: W Magazine

For Jim Clark, the cofounder of Netscape, one yacht hasn’t been enough. Clark has owned boats for more than 30 years, and in 2012, he put up two of his sailing yachts for sale.

Jim Clark, right. Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Source: Business Insider

Clark listed the boats for a combined $113 million: the 136-foot Hanuman for $18 million, and the 295-foot Athena for $95 million. However, Clark has yet to offload Athena. Clark also previously owned a 155-foot yacht named Hyperion, and currently also owns a sloop called Hanuman.

The yacht Athena. Fosnez / Wikimedia Commons Source: Boat International, Forbes

Charles Simonyi worked at Microsoft until 2002, and oversaw the creation of Microsoft Office software. A few years before he left, Simonyi decided to purchase a yacht. He told the designer that wanted his yacht to be “home away from [his] home in Seattle.”

Reuters/Sergei Remezov Source: Boat International

The product of that conversation in 1999 is Simonyi’s yacht named Skat, meaning “treasure” in Danish. The yacht measures 233 feet long, and is unique with its nontraditional design and gray color. Skat features a matching gray helicopter, a gym, and motorcycles.

Christopher Hunt/Getty Images Source: Yacht Charter Fleet

Opulent British billionaire Richard Branson owned a yacht until he sold it in September 2018. The 105-foot catamaran sold for $3 million, significantly lower than the $9.6 million price Branson listed the boat for in 2014.

Anthony Harvey/Getty Images, Virgin Source: Business Insider

Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, bought the boat in 2009. He named it Necker Belle, a nod to his private Caribbean island, Necker Island.

Necker Island Source: Business Insider

Additional reporting by Paige Leskin.

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Grace Kay and Sindhu Sundar

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July 3, 2023
The first crop of space mining companies didn’t work out, but a new generation is trying again

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Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that space mining was inevitable. Analysts, tech visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business.

Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, backed by the likes of Google‘s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, cropped up to take advantage of the predicted payoff.

Fast forward to 2022, and both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have been acquired by companies that have nothing to do with space mining. Humanity has yet to commercially mine even a single asteroid. So what’s taking so long?

Space mining is a long-term undertaking and one that investors do not necessarily have the patience to support.

“If we had to develop a full-scale asteroid mining vehicle today, we would need a few hundred million dollars to do that using commercial processes. It would be difficult to convince the investment community that that’s the right thing to do,” says Joel Sercel, president and CEO of TransAstra Corporation.

“In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

This has not dissuaded Sercel from trying to mine the cosmos. TransAstra will initially focus on mining asteroids for water to make rocket propellant, but would like to eventually mine “everything on the periodic table.” But Sercel says such a mission is still a ways off.

“In terms of the timeline for mining asteroids, for us, the biggest issue is funding. So it depends on how fast we can scale the business into these other ventures and then get practical engineering experience operating systems that have all the components of an asteroid mining system. But we could be launching an asteroid mission in the 5 to 7-year time frame.”

Sercel hopes these other ventures keep it afloat until it develops its asteroid mining business. The idea is to use the tech that will eventually be incorporated into TransAstra’s astroid mining missions to satisfy already existing market needs, such as using space tugs to deliver satellites to their exact orbits and using satellites to aid in traffic management as space gets increasingly more crowded.

AstroForge is another company that believes space mining will become a reality. Founded in 2022 by a former SpaceX engineer and a former Virgin Galactic engineer, AstroForge still believes there is money to be made in mining asteroids for precious metals.

“On Earth we have a limited amount of rare earth elements, specifically the platinum group metals. These are industrial metals that are used in everyday things your cell phone, cancer, drugs, catalytic converters, and we’re running out of them. And the only way to access more of these is to go off world,” says AstroForge Co-Founder and CEO Matt Gialich.

AstroForge plans to mine and refine these metals in space and then bring them back to earth to sell. To keep costs down, AstroForge will attach its refining payload to off-the shelf satellites and launch those satellites on SpaceX rockets.

“There’s quite a few companies that make what is referred to as a satellite bus. This is what you would typically think of as a satellite, the kind of box with solar panels on it, a propulsion system being connected to it. So for us, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel there,” Gialich says. “The previous people before us, Planetary Resources and DSI [Deep Space Industries], they had to buy entire vehicles. They had to build much, much larger and much more expensive satellites, which required a huge injection of capital. And I think that was the ultimate downfall of both of those companies.”

The biggest challenge, AstroForge says, is deciding which asteroids to target for mining. Prior to conducting their own missions, all early-stage mining companies have to go on is existing observation data from researchers and a hope that the asteroids they have selected contain the minerals they seek.

“The technology piece you can control, the operations pieces you can control, but you can’t control what the asteroid is until you get there,” says Jose Acain, AstroForge Co-Founder and CTO.

To find out more about the challenges facing space mining companies and their plans to make space mining a real business watch the video.

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October 9, 2022
Larry Page’s electric air taxi startup is winding down | CNN Business

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CNN
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Kittyhawk, the electric air taxi startup backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, announced Wednesday that it plans to “wind down” operations.

“We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We’re still working on the details of what’s next,” the company wrote in a brief statement shared on its LinkedIn and Twitter pages. Kittyhawk did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Kittyhawk had the lofty mission of “building autonomous, affordable, ubiquitous and eco-conscious air taxis,” according to its website. It was founded by Sebastian Thrun, a former Google executive who led the company’s self-driving car efforts.

The startup operated in secret until 2017, when it publicly unveiled its first aircraft — an ultralight electric plane dubbed Flyer that was designed to fly over water. Page, one of the world’s richest men, was said to have invested $100 million in flying car startups, including Kittyhawk.

Flyer was ultimately retired in 2020, after more than 25,000 successful test flights, according to the company, and it reportedly laid off many of those who had been working on Flyer at the time. The company launched other electric aircraft prototypes and announced a partnership with Boeing in 2019.

The shuttering of Kittyhawk will not impact its joint venture with Boeing, which has been dubbed Wisk. In a tweet, Wisk said that it remains “in a strong financial position,” with both Boeing and Kittyhawk as investors.

Like Kittyhawk, Wisk is developing an “all-electric, self-flying air taxi” that it says “rises like a helicopter and flies like a plane,” according to its website. This “aircraft will remove the need for a runway and allow you to land where you need to be,” according to the company.

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September 29, 2022