David E. Shaw(II)

David E. Shaw is an American billionaire and former hedge fund manager. Shaw received a bachelor's degree from UC San Diego then a Ph.D from Stanford University. After graduating, he became an assistant professor in the computer science department at Columbia then a VP of technology for Morgan Stanley. With $28 million in seed money from investor Donald Sussman, Shaw started D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1988. D.E. Shaw & Co (or DESCO) is a highly secretive hedge fund that pioneered the use of computers and complex math formulas to exploit anomalies in global financial markets. It would go on to become one of the five highest-grossing hedge funds of all time, with $70 billion in assets under management. The success of D. E. Shaw & Co spawned the computing revolution in finance. In 1990, Shaw hired Jeff Bezos, who described Shaw as a "work soul mate" and rose to the level of Senior Vice President. Shaw placed Bezos in charge of internet projects at D.E. Shaw & Co, including the creation of a free advertising-supported email service called Juno (which predated Gmail and Yahoo before merging with NetZero), a new kind of financial service that allowed internet users to trade stocks called FarSight Financial Services (which predated E-Trade and was sold to Merrill Lynch), and a project called The Everything Store, an online retailer that sold everything. Bezos asked Shaw if he could take the idea out on his own. Shaw agreed without taking a stake in the new company, and in 1994, Bezos departed D. E. Shaw & Co , after marrying Shaw's administrative assistant, Mackenzie Bezos, to move to Seattle and start Amazon.com. Shaw directed D. E. Shaw & Co from 1988 until 2002, when he took a step back from day-to-do operations to start the biochemistry research company D. E. Shaw Research, although he remained D. E. Shaw & Co's chairman. Shaw is a major political donor to many Democratic causes, including many large contributions to the Democratic National Committee. He was a top donor and later adviser to President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama, who each gave him a seat on their President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In 2016, he donated $2.25 million to Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. In 2024, he donated $1 million to groups supporting Kamala Harris. Shaw is married to financial journalist and Obama advisory council member Beth Kobliner, and they have three children together: Adam Shaw, Jacob Shaw, and Rebecca Shaw, who writes for The Tonight Show. In 2024, Shaw's personal fortune was valued by Forbes at $7.8 billion.