Steve Wozniak Net Worth, Crypto and NFT Investments

Millionaire Steve Wozniak, commonly referred to as “Woz”, is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. He’s famous for being one of the founding fathers of Apple, and the main brain behind the Apple II computer that projected Apple into the Limelight. However, many expected the net worth of Steve Wozniak to be around $10 to $15 billion due to his relationship with Apple. He’s nowhere near the valuation owing to his philanthropy. On numerous occasions, Steve Wozniak gave out his Apple shares to some of the engineers working at the firm. 

Also, he sold a significant portion of his stock in Apple when he left in 1985. Presently, he’s left with about $15 million worth of Apple Shares. Likewise, he lost a significant portion of his net worth sponsoring technological festivals that failed to turn in profits. 

Steve Wozniak’s Net Worth

Early Life

Born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose California as Steve Gary Wozniak. Initially, his birth certificate contained “Stephan Gary Wozniak” but his mother Margaret Louise Wozniak instead said he should be called Steve. His Father Francis Jacob Wozniak worked as an engineer for Lockheed Corporation. 

In 1968, Wozniak graduated from Homestead High School, in Cupertino, California. Also, his sister, Leslie Wozniak attended the same high school as Steve. She worked as a grant adviser at Five Bridges Foundation. The foundation helps at-risk youths in San Francisco. Steve’s other sibling, Mark Wozniak is a former tech executive who lives in Menlo Park. 

Steve Wozniak advanced his education at the University of Colorado Boulder. However, he was expelled in his first year for hacking the university’s computer system. Thereafter, he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969. He was nicknamed Berkeley Blue in the phreaking community for his blue box design. 

He re-enrolled at De Anza College in Cupertino. Steve Wozniak transferred to the University of California, Berkeley two years later. He made significant progress with his computer design project by building his first computer alongside a friend, Bill Fernandez. Wozniak and Fernandez achieved this success through a self-taught engineering project. By mistake, a newspaper reporter stepped on the power supply cable and blew up the computer. However, the project served as future guidelines for other computer projects he designed.  

How Steve Wozniak met Steve Jobs

Later, Steve Wozniak dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley before Hewlett-Packard (HP) employed him. There, he built calculators for the firm. During his time at HP, he met Steve Jobs through Fernandez. Jobs also worked briefly for HP. In 1971, Wozniak and Jobs began their first collaboration. Wozniak gained inspiration for building blue boxes after reading an article titled “Secrets of the Little Blue Box”. He designed the blue boxes to aid long-distance phone calls without any charges. Jobs assisted Wozniak in selling the blue boxes, selling two hundred pieces at $150 each. Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs split the proceeds from the sales of the blue boxes among themselves.

Three years later, Jobs was employed by an arcade game firm, Atari in California. At Atari, he was designated to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. The firm offered him $100 per chip he could eliminate in the machine. Jobs couldn’t do the job on his own due to his little knowledge of circuit board design. He then made a deal with Wozniak to minimize the chips and then promised to split the fee evenly between them. Steve Wozniak reduced the chips by 50 using RAM for the brick representation. 

Meanwhile, Atari couldn’t use the new design by Steve Wozniak because it had no scoring and coin system. Nevertheless, the firm paid Steve Jobs as promised, including a full bonus that amounted to $5,000. However, Jobs lied to Wozniak that he was only paid $700, resulting in Wozniak taking $350 from the pay. 

In 1975, Wozniak began the design and development of the computer that would eventually make him famous, the Apple I. Initially, Steve Wozniak designed the computer to impress members of the Homebrew Computer Club. The club consisted of a local group of electronics hobbyists interested in computing. The club focused on building the microcomputer industry over the next few decades. Steve Wozniak’s new Apple design was exceptional, unlike other custom Homebrew designs. The computer had an easy-to-achieve video capability that attracted huge attention when it was unveiled. Wozniak credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions while in his youth as a source of inspiration for the design of the Apple Computer.

Apple

After starting the Apple I project in 1975, Steve Wozniak completed the fundamental design of the Apple I computer on March 1, 1976. He singlehandedly designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the computer. Before starting the Apple project alongside Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak offered the design to HP while working there, but was rejected by the company on five occasions. Steve Jobs then urged Wozniak to start a business of their own to build and sell bare printed circuit boards of the Apple I. Steve Wozniak refused at first, but after much persuasion from Steve Jobs, he gave in. Jobs convinced him that they could at least tell their grandchildren that they had their own company even if the project wasn’t successful. 

The two partners have to sell their properties to fund the building of the first batch of circuit boards. Steve Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator while Jobs sold his Volkswagen van. Exactly a month after Steve Wozniak completed the design of Apple I, he formed the Apple Computer Company alongside Steve Jobs. The firm developed into what is generally known as Apple Inc. today. At the inception of the company, Ronald Wayne served as the administrative supervisor. The name “Apple” was coined for the new company shortly after Jobs returned from Oregon and told Wozniak about how he spent his time spent on an apple orchard there.

After establishing Apple, Jobs, and Wozniak traveled to meet the Homebrew Computer Club to present the fully assembled version of the Apple I. Luckily, Paul Terrell was present and he was about to open a new computer shop in Mountain View, California. Terrell saw the presentation and was impressed by the functions of the Apple I. Terrell ordered 50 units of the Apple I and paid $500 each on delivery. However, he insisted that Jobs must assemble the computer fully because he was not interested in buying bare printed circuit boards.

Wozniak followed Jobs to his parent’s home in Los Altos where they assembled the first boards. At first, they worked in Jobs’ bedroom before shifting to the garage because there was no space left. Wozniak’s apartment in San Jose wasn’t considered because it was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and computer games that he had developed. They were able to meet the demands of Terell that year and they sold the Apple I for $666.66. 

In November 1976, Apple gained more financial backing after Jobs and Wozniak received significant funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer, Mike Markkula. Meanwhile, Wozniak still retained his job at HP despite the creation of Apple. Markkula requested Steve Wozniak resign from HP. Eventually, he left, picking up the role of the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Apple I had strong competitors in the market which hindered its total acceptance. This prompted Wozniak and Jobs to consider designing a new version. Nonetheless, the Apple I was considered a high success. 

The emergence of Apple II and Apple III

After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak designed the Apple II. The Apple II is widely regarded as the first personal computer with the ability to display color graphics. Also, the computer is dubbed as the first with an in-built BASIC programming language. It is worth mentioning that Steve Wozniak gained the inspiration of designing the Apple II to display the color graphics from Atari. According to Wozniak, the gaming firm’s first arcade games simulated colors. He conceived a way of putting colors into the NTSC system by using a US$1 chip. 

While designing the Apple II, Jobs, and Wozniak had a heated argument. They disagreed on the number of expansion slots the new project should have. Wozniak wanted eight while Jobs insisted on Two. During the argument, Wozniak threatened Jobs that he should leave Apple and create another company if he was not satisfied. In the end, they agreed on eight, leading to the unveiling of the Apple II during the April 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. The project was a success as it gained much attention in the market. Due to that, It became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers in the world. Alongside the Apple II, Wozniak designed the Disk II floppy disk drive in 1978. Initially, it was designed for the Apple II as a replacement for cassette tape storage. 

Steve Wozniak made a significant financial breakthrough that introduced him to the world of millionaires. In 1980, Apple went public, helping both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to grow financially. This breakthrough laid the foundation for the net worth of Steve Wozniak. That year, the firm released the Apple III but it was discontinued four years later. The Apple III was a commercial failure. As a matter of fact, Steve Wozniak admitted that it had 100% hardware failures. Unlike the other versions, the Apple III was designed by the marketing department for commercial boost. 

Departure from Apple

On February 7, 1981, Steve Wozniak suffered a plane crash at the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley, California. Wozniak wasn’t certified to man the plane. As a result of the crash, he suffered severe face and head injuries, including losing a tooth. Also, he suffered anterograde amnesia for five weeks after the plane crash. At one point, he didn’t remember his name while in the hospital or the things he did for a time after he was released.

After recovering from the crash, Steve Wozniak didn’t return to Apple. Later on, Wozniak lost interest in engineering and design stating he wanted to start afresh. To some extent, computer games on Apple II helped him regain his memory. He left Apple temporarily in 1981 and enrolled at UC Berkeley to complete his Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He made a return to Apple three years later after failing to make a profit from an event-sponsoring firm, Unuson. 

Despite his return to Apple, Steve Wozniak began to feel like the firm was hindering him from being who he wanted to be. He preferred engineering to management, but he couldn’t work in any engineering capacity due to the growing addition of talented engineers to the firm. Gradually, Steve Wozniak began to feel like he was no longer needed at Apple. In 1985, Steve Wozniak left Apple, selling most of his stock in the company. Meanwhile, Steve Wozniak has not left Apple technically because he never resigned or officially severed his relationship with the firm. Up to this moment, Steve Wozniak is listed as an employee of Apple and receives an annual stipend of $120,000 for representing the company at public events.

Life After Apple

After leaving Apple, Steve Wozniak established CL 9 in 1985. The firm developed the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987, known as the “CORE”. Also, he ventured into teaching computer at elementary schools in a bid to impact knowledge. Through Unuson, he provided funds to support schools in employing more teachers and equipment.

Also, in 2001, he founded Wheels of Zeus (WOZ) in a bid to design wireless GPS technology to “help everyday people find everyday things much more easily.” The firm shut down five years later. Thereafter, Steve Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology. The firm is a holding company through which he acquired technology firms and developed them, alongside other Apple alumni like Hancock and Amelio. He joined the board of directors of Danger, Inc. Steve Wozniak served as the Chief Scientist of Fusion-io between 2009 to 2014.

Alongside Rick White, Trip Hunter CEO, he co-founded Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC). SVCC is an annual pop culture and technology convention at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. He went on to establish Woz U in October 2017. The firm provides educational technology services for independent students and employees. Towards the end of 2020, Wozniak launched another company known as Efforce. Efforce is regarded as a marketplace for funding ecologically friendly projects. 

Steve Wozniak’s Investment Portfolio

Wozniak is notable for his numerous investment portfolios. According to Forbes, he is an influential investor in the stock market. Steve Wozniak reportedly owns stocks in about 15 companies, a development that has significantly impacted his net worth. Some of the firms in his investment portfolio includes Hewlett Packard, Morgan Stanley, Nike and many more.

Steve Wozniak’s Real Estate and Car Garage

Steve Wozniak is notable for his luxurious lifestyle. He owns a magnificent apartment in San Jose, California. He reportedly bought the 12,200 square feet apartment for $19 million. In 2015, Wozniak sold his former Los Gatos home to to pharmaceutical entrepreneur Mehdi Paborji for $3.9 million.

Apart from his magnificent abode, Steve Wozniak is also a proud owner of luxurious cars. Recently, he added a Bugatti Divo to his garage for $7 million. Some of the highly expensive car brands in his garage include Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Alfa Romeo Giulia, a Ferrari Portofino and a Lexus GX.

Is Steve Wozniak Pro Bitcoin?

Steve Wozniak has proven to be a great proponent of Bitcoin. The Apple co-founder has never hidden his admiration for the largest crypto by market cap. He believes in the growth potential of Bitcoin and sees it as the only trustable digital assets. Wozniak has over time, hyped Bitcoin with the intention to aid its widespread popularity and adoption. In one of his recent interviews, Wozniak hyped Bitcoin as the only crypto that is pure-gold mathematics. According to him; “the government can just create new dollars, and borrow and borrow. You never have it fixed. Bitcoin was the goal. It’s the digital equivalent of Gold. Bitcoin is the most amazing mathematical miracle.”

What thrills Steve Wozniak about Bitcoin is its underlying technology and calculations. At a time, he praised what he described as the “mathematical purity” of Bitcoin, stressing that it cannot be easily modified or doctored by anyone in control of it, unlike the U.S. dollar. He said; “Bitcoin is mathematically defined, there is a certain quantity of Bitcoin, there’s a way it’s distributed and it’s pure and there’s no human running it, there’s no company running it and it’s just growing and growing and surviving, that to me says something that is natural and nature is more important than all our human conventions.”

The Apple co-founder strongly believes the largest crypto by market cap has what it takes to relegate the U.S. dollar in the global financial arena. He shares the same perspective with Jack Dorsey about Bitcoin becoming the world’s single currency. In one of his recent interviews, he was quoted saying; “I buy into what Jack Dorsey says [on Bitcoin becoming the world’s single currency], not that I necessarily believe it’s going to happen, but because I want it to be that way.”

Prior to the bear market that plunged BTC to its lowest low in 2022, Wozniak still tipped the token to attain the $100,000 milestone. He said; “just recently, I think Bitcoin is going to go to a hundred thousand. I don’t know where you get that feeling. I can’t put any mathematics to it. Just really feel it from all of the interest. The interest in crypto is so high and so I put a bunch of money into an online wallet account, Coinbase.” It is worth mentioning that Wozniak banked on the increasing mainstream interest in BTC to make the prediction.

In recent years, Steve Wozniak established himself as a consistent advocate of Bitcoin. He leveraged his various social media platforms like YouTube to spread the gospel of Bitcoin and as well share investment tips with his large number of followers. It is not in doubt that his growing influence in the space made it possible for scammers to impersonate him in a bid to abruptly accumulate Bitcoin assets. According to our findings, the fraudulent act was carried out in the form of videos, illustrating the images of Wozniak. The videos were circulated on YouTube and Twitter, in an attempt to mislead unsuspecting investors to send their BTC assets to a specific wallet address so that they can receive twice the amount of the assets sent.

It is worth mentioning that Wozniak was not the only name used as bait in the fraudulent act. Images of other celebrities like Elon Musk and many more were abruptly featured in the videos seeking to rip off investors of their assets. Although Twitter was quick to delete the fraudulent videos, YouTube was unresponsive, thereby triggering a lawsuit from Wozniak.

In the lawsuit, Wozniak slammed YouTube for failing to take down the fraudulent videos, thereby making unsuspecting investors vulnerable. The Apple co-founder accused YouTube of promoting and amassing profits from scams.

He said; “YouTube has been unapologetically hosting, promoting, and directly profiting from similar scams. This happened to Elon Musk and myself and others on YouTube recently. The reputation problem lies in the fact that after a while, many email us looking for their crypto-currency and [are] mad at us. The real problem is that there is no solid way to keep many such posts from showing up, even with obvious copyright infringement, via algorithms. And with such companies as YouTube (Google) and Twitter, good luck reaching a human.”

Crypto and NFT Holdings of Steve Wozniak

Beyond being a committed proponent of Bitcoin, Steve Wozniak also holds an appreciable amount of the token in his portfolio. Our findings confirm him as one of the earliest investors in BTC. At the 2019 Economic Times Global Business Summit in India, Wozniak gave a hint about his early investment in Bitcoin. The Apple co-founder said he bought his first BTC at a time it traded for around $700. Narrating his first investment in the token, he said; “I had them so that I could someday travel and not use credit cards, wallets or cash. I could do it all on bitcoin.”

Now, Bitcoin trades around thousands of dollars, thus translating into huge gains for the Apple co-founder. By virtue of this, we can say the massive spike in the value of Bitcoin from $700 to thousands of dollars must have also contributed to the current net worth of Steve Wozniak. Although, there is no credible information confirming the exact worth of his Bitcoin portfolio, we can speculate that Wozniak is a still big investor in BTC. We included him our list of rich Bitcoin investors.

Meanwhile, Wozniak was once a victim of a Bitcoin scam. According to our findings, his Bitcoin holdings were stolen in a crypto credit card fraud. Narrating the ordeal; he said “I had seven bitcoins stolen from me through fraud. Somebody bought them from me online through a credit card, and they cancelled the credit card payment. It was that easy. And it was from a stolen credit card number, so you can never get it back.”

Apart from Bitcoin, there are indications that Wozniak might also hold Unicorn tokens. Recall that the Apple co-founder is a panelist on the TV show Unicorn Hunters designed to pitch entrepreneurs to potential investors. In 2022, the executives of Unicorn Hunters launched a native crypto for the project. The developers said the token was designed to address extreme volatility regarded as the basic problem of traditional currencies. More so, it was also said that the tokens would protect its holders from the implications of inflation.

Following the launch of the token, Wozniak lauded Unicorn, saying it opens up the world of startup investment to the masses. Also, he said the unicorn token is not like other cryptocurrencies that is based on just words and talks. According to him, the token is instead based on the outcome of investments.

https://t.co/PvgYKWZfiq
Alex has financed Unicorn Hunters where startups make pitches to an online audience. Alex also created a ‘Unicoin’ token based on the success of investments, like stock.

I am proud to have Alex as a friend.https://t.co/3YSrLKZ1Lchttps://t.co/0MT15zXvkZ

— Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) March 3, 2022

Recall that Wozniak has always been critical of other cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin and Unicorn. In a recent interview, he lamented that “there’s so many cryptocurrencies that come out now. Everybody has a way to create a new one, and you have a celebrity star with it. It seems like they’re just collecting a bunch of money from people who want to invest at the very earliest stage, when it’s worth pennies.”

Meanwhile, the Apple co-founder is not an admirer of NFTs. In recent times, he has described NFTs as being “so up in the air.” By virtue of this, there are no indications that the influential Apple exec holds any NFT holdings.

Crypto Projects Featuring Steve Wozniak

We can link Efforce, a crypto project that seeks to emerge as “the first blockchain-based energy-saving platform” to Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak launched the project in 2020 in a bid to diversify the source of his net worth. According to our findings, the native token of the project is known as WOZX. By holding this token, investors are investing in tokenized energy savings. In Efforce, participating firms are expected to report their respective energy savings. These savings are consequently engraved on the blockchain before they are redistributed to token holders. Although the project enjoyed a remarkable price performance a few days after its launch, it is currently struggling.

Many projects including Wall Street Memes will be looking at the possibility of having Steve Wozniak in their content soon. For Wall Street Memes, Steve Wozniak, one of the founding fathers of Apple, will further join the ever-growing list of top crypto personalities that have been featured on Wall Street Memes. Wall Street Memes has grown in prominence due to the success of the presale of the $WSM token.

The $WSM rakes an outstanding 350,000 daily from presale investors, making it one of the remarkable crypto presales. The success of the presale aided the influx of new community members to the Wall Street Memes ecosystem. The Twitter, Telegram, and Instagram presence of the project gained a significant boost owing to this success. Now, $WSM is on course to become one of the next cryptocurrency to rally high. Visit wallstmemes.com to invest in $WSM. 

Steve Wozniak’s Net Worth – Our Verdict

We have been able to break down the net worth of Steve Wozniak, with a huge emphasis on his investment portfolio. As an erudite computer engineer, he is the brain behind the fundamental design of Apple 1 and 2. It is worthy of note that the global success of Apple helped grow the net worth of Steve Wozniak. Apart from being a computer programmer, Wozniak is a notable investor in stocks. Our findings indicate that he owns the shares of about 15 firms including Nike. He also holds an appreciable amount of Bitcoin in his investment portfolio. His investment in the crypto industry deepened after establishing Efforce in 2020. According to findings, Efforce runs as “the first blockchain-based energy-saving platform.” One thing that distinguishes Wozniak from others is his quest to always diversify his source of wealth. As of 2023, the net worth of Steve Wozniak is $140 million.

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