Michael Dell
American businessman and CEO · United States · On the map · Executives · Born 1965 · age 61
He sold RAM upgrades from his dorm room in 1984, turned it into a direct-to-consumer empire, then pulled off the largest management buyout since 2008 - $24.4 billion to take his own company private in 2013 - before bringing it back five years later.
Why now
Won the National Medal of Science, 8 October.
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Satya Nadella
A life in dates
Readers a day, 2 September 2026 to 31 October 2026, highest on 8 October 2026.
Satya Nadella8 October 2026, Also read moreSatya Nadella
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Michael DellPartners
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About this person
Michael Saul Dell was born February 23, 1965, and by the time he founded Dell Technologies he had already grasped that cutting out middlemen could reshape an industry. The model worked: the company became one of the world's largest technology infrastructure firms, and Dell held on to roughly half of it for decades. In January 2013 he announced a $24.4 billion bid to take Dell Inc. private, the biggest management buyout since the Great Recession, and closed the deal that October. The company returned to public markets in December 2018. By 2026 his 40% stake in Dell Technologies and his other holdings - including a minority share in the Las Vegas Raiders, acquired that May - had driven his net worth past $245 billion, landing him fifth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
