Larry Page has come a long way to claim the title of the world’s wealthiest individual of Jewish heritage and the second richest person globally. Last year, he ranked third on the Jewish billionaires list, behind Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg, and seventh on the 2025 global billionaires list with an estimated fortune of $144 billion. For perspective, his net worth was valued at just $42 billion in 2018 – since then, he has multiplied his wealth sixfold.
As a young student he met Sergey Brin in 1995 at Stanford University as doctoral students in computer science who connected around a shared research idea: developing a search engine that ranks websites not by how many times a search term appears in them, but by the structure of links between them. The idea became the PageRank algorithm, and in 1996 they built the first prototype, BackRub, which they ran on Stanford’s servers.
In 1998, they officially founded Google from a garage in Menlo Park, California, after an initial seed investment from investor Andy Bechtolsheim, who wrote them a check for $100,000 – which quickly became one of the most successful investments ever in Silicon Valley history. Page served as CEO until 2001 (when Eric Schmidt replaced him) and again from 2011 to 2015.
Six years after founding, in 2004, Google went public. Page and Brin, who each equally held approximately 16% of the publicly traded company’s shares, became billionaires for the first time.
Page stepped down as CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in 2019, but remains a board member and controlling shareholder. He is currently working on a new AI startup called Dynatomics, focused on manufacturing products, and was previously a founding investor in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018.
The Immigrant Who Built an Empire
Page’s partner, Sergey Brin, ranks second among Jewish billionaires on Forbes Israel’s 2026 list. Over the past year, driven by Alphabet’s stock surge – the founders’ primary wealth source – Brin’s fortune correspondingly skyrocketed, making him approximately $100 billion wealthier than last year. This also positions him as the third richest person in the world.
The genius duo who founded what became one of the world’s largest technology behemoths became billionaires following the August 2004 IPO at what was then considered an astronomical valuation of $23 billion. Since then, the company has grown into a global juggernaut that recently touched a $4 trillion valuation. Brin, like his partner, has added enormous wealth to his fortune. Just a decade ago, for instance, his net worth was valued at approximately $40 billion – since then, he has multiplied his wealth sixfold.
Brin was born in Russia to a Jewish family and immigrated to the United States at age six following frequent incidents of antisemitism experienced by his family. He is considered one of America’s wealthiest immigrants and has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Unlike his partner Page, who is notoriously private, Brin actively returned from semi-retirement last year to assist Alphabet with its AI strategy during one of the company’s defining crisis moments. He came back to help upgrade Google’s Gemini AI chatbot and is credited as a “key contributor” to its dizzying success when the model launched in December. Like his co-founder, Brin currently serves as a board member at Alphabet and holds controlling shares.
The Philanthropy Gap
So what explains the current wealth gap between the two Jewish founders? Primarily Sergey Brin’s philanthropic activities, as he has liquidated portions of the company over the years to fund his charitable endeavors.
According to company filings with the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), in recent years Brin has sold more shares than his colleague Page, who essentially hasn’t reported a sale since 2022. Thus, today according to regulatory filings, Page holds approximately 389 million shares, compared to 362.7 million held by Brin.
Brin has donated portions of his Alphabet and Tesla shares several times in recent years to nonprofit organizations and Parkinson’s disease research – including a $700 million donation in early 2025, and additional donations of $615 million and $600 million in 2023, and $450 million in 2021. Last November, he reported a massive $1.1 billion donation of Alphabet shares to his foundation Catalyst4, which focuses on climate change research and the central nervous system.
To date, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist has donated approximately $3.9 billion, including to research in climate change and the nervous system. He is considered the world’s largest donor to Parkinson’s disease research, having contributed over $1.5 billion to date – an issue close to his heart due to a family genetic predisposition.
