Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is close to becoming a billionaire, with Fortune estimating the CEO’s net worth to be around $785 million . Cook has already decided what he is going to do with the massive fortune he has accumulated over the years working at Apple. Like several other multi-millionaires, Cook has decided to give his fortune away to charity. He is also going to pay for his 10-year-old nephew’s college education.
In 2010, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates started The Giving Pledge, which is a program that encourages billionaires to give away at least half of their fortune to some form of charity. Since the initiative began, more than a hundred of the country’s wealthiest have signed up to join the cause. CNN Money reports that some of the people already committed include Facebook giant Mark Zuckerburg and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.
Cook’s net worth is a direct result of his stock holdings in Apple. He currently is in possession of $120 million in regular Apple stock, and then holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested.
The 54-year-old CEO has always been a fiercely private person, but he was thrust into a media frenzy recently when he publicly announced that he was gay. Cook spoke out last year about lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender discrimination last year when he was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.
Along with becoming more open about his personal life, Cook is turning Apple into a more open kind of company. This is in complete contrast to what his predecessor Steve Jobs did. Jobs made every effort to keep Apple employees and the media from communicating, but Cook says exposure will be a key part of Apple’s future .
“My objective is to raise the public profile of several of the folks on the executive team, and others as well. Because I think that’s good for Apple at the end of the day.”
For now, Cook appears to be focused on the future of the technology giant, recently introducing products such as the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Pay, and the Apple Watch. The iPhones seem to be the single product that put Apple back on an upswing in the competitive market. Apple sold an astounding number of its popular phones in the last quarter of 2014, reporting 74.5 million units sold and generating $18 billion in profits as a result.
[Photo courtesy of Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News]
