Sergey Brin’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth & life story

  • Source of Wealth: Google
  • Age: 47
  • Birth Place: Moscow, Soviet Union
  • Marital Status: Married (Nicole Shanahan)
  • Full Name: Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin
  • Nationality: United States
  • Date of Birth: August 21, 1973
  • Ethnicity: Russian Jewish
  • Occupation: Internet entrepreneur, board member at Alphabet
  • Education: University of Maryland, Stanford University
  • Children: 3

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-American mathematician and computer scientist who co-founded Google along with Larry Page and has an estimated net worth of $97.25 billion as of April 2021. He is the eighth wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, and the ninth according to Forbes. In December 2019, Brin resigned as President of Alphabet, the parent company of Google since 2015, but remains a board member and a controller shareholder with 25.2% of the total voting power. He owns 19.1 million Class A shares and 19.1 Class B shares of the company, equal to more than $86 billion, considering the closing price of the stock on April 12, 2021.

In late 2020, Brin established a family office in Singapore to manage his assets. Setting up this firm, named Bayshore Global Management, he joins the group of billionaires that take advantage of Singapore’s low tax regime and incentives program for this kind of company.

Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Russia. He fled the Soviet Union with his family at the age of 6 and grew up in Adelphi, Maryland. Brin studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Maryland. After receiving a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he pursued a doctorate at Stanford University and wrote several papers on data mining and pattern extraction for leading academic journals. At Stanford, Brin met his future partner Larry Page.

In that time, existing developments could only rank search results by the frequency of appearance of a given word on a web page. Page thought that ranking websites by the number of links leading to it was a more useful measure of a web page relevance, and to explore the possibilities of his idea he appealed to the data mining expertise of his classmate Brin. Together, Page and Brin authored the paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, which quickly became one of the most downloaded scientific documents in history.

They registered the domain google.com in 1997, and the following year incorporated Google as a privately held company. At first, Page served as CEO and Brin as President. After outgrowing some offices, the company moved to a complex of buildings in Mountain View, California, in 1999. In 2000, they started to sell text-based advertisements related to search keywords. By 2001, with the dot com crisis, a significant number of internet companies had folded, but Google was growing and turning a profit. Page and Brin recruited Eric Schmidt to serve as CEO, with Page taking the role of President for Products and Brin as President for Technology.

Google’s initial public offering in 2004 gave the company a market capitalization of $23 billion, and employees owning shares became millionaires overnight. Page and Brin, who became multibillionaires at age 27, reduced their salaries to a dollar a year and refused bonuses, tying their wealth to the performance of the company in the stock market.

Despite its growth, Google has succeeded in preserving an informal and creative work environment where employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their work time on independent projects. In addition to its product development, Google has also grown through acquisitions of hardware and software companies, among which stand out YouTube, acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006. Prior to the purchase, YouTube’s earnings were negligible, but with Google that changed significantly. Today 99% of Google’s revenue is derived from advertising.

Brin has invested in the founding rounds of electric vehicles developer Tesla with $40 million in 2006, DNA testing technology company 23andMe with $13.6 million in 2009 and $50 million in 2012, and Parkinson’s curative treatments developer OccamzRazor with $650,000 in 2018. Besides, he is financing the building of a flying airship at a NASA research center that costs between $100 and $150 million and is funded entirely by him.

Brin owns a 3,457-square-foot, two-story, three-bedroom penthouse in Manhattan bought for $8.5 million in 2008, an estate in Los Altos Hills, California, valued at $7 in 2014, and in 2015 was rumored that he was interested in a 30,000-square-foot mansion in Alpine, New Jersey, valued at $48.88 million. He also owns a yacht purchased for $80 million in 2011.

Brin pays 47 people who work for him and his family, including ex-bankers who manage his philanthropy and finances. He is one of the most philanthropic billionaires in the world: from 2000 to 2017 donated $37.5 billion.

Brin is married to Nicole Shanahan since 2018. They have been dating since 2015, and have one child. He also has two children with his former wife Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the $1.5 billion genetics company 23andMe.

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This article was updated on April 12, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

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Alison Krauss’s net worth, biography, fact, career, awards and life story

What Is Alison Krauss’ Net Worth?Alison Krauss is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who has a net worth of $18 million. The winner of more than 40 Grammys, Alison Krauss is best known for her work in the bluegrass and country genres. Alison has released six studio albums with Alison Krauss & Union Station, including “So Long So Wrong” (1997) and “Lonely Runs Both Ways” (2004), and she collaborated with former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant on the albums “Raising Sand” (2007) and “Raise the Roof” (2021) and with The Cox Family on the 1994 album “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow.” Krauss has also released the solo albums “Too Late to Cry” (1987), “I’ve Got That Old Feeling” (1990), “Forget About It” (1999), and “Windy City” (2017), and she has performed on songs by Shenandoah, Michael Johnson, Mark Chesnutt, Kenny Rogers, Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Mandy Barnett, and Alabama. In 2002, Alison was ranked #12 on Country Music Television’s “40 Greatest Women of Country Music” list.” Krauss was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2019, and she was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2021.Early LifeAlison Krauss was born Alison Maria Krauss on July 23, 1971, in Decatur, Illinois. Her father, Fred, was a German immigrant who earned a doctorate in psychology and later went into real estate. Alison’s mother, Louise, is an illustrator of textbooks and magazines. Alison and her older brother, Viktor, grew up in Champaign, and Krauss began studying classical violin when she was 5 years old. Alison told “The Washington Post” in 1990, “One of the requirements of being a child in my family was take up an instrument for five years, and my mom didn’t want drums banging around all the time.” Louise played guitar and banjo, and Viktor played double bass and piano as a teenager and became a rock and jazz multi-instrumentalist. Viktor has served as a sideman for many artists, and he performed on Alison’s albums “Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection” (1995), “Forget About It” (1999), and “A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection” (2007). In 1979, Louise came across a notice for a fiddle competition at the Champaign County Fair and bought a bluegrass album and an instructional bluegrass fiddle book. Krauss learned to play some of the album’s songs by ear, and she placed fourth in the novice category. In the early ’80s, she sang and played fiddle with Marvin Lee Flessner’s country band, and in 1983, her parents gave her a custom violin. When Alison was 13, she came in first in the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship and was named the “Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest” by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America.CareerIn 1985, Krauss collaborated with Jim Hoiles and Swamp Weiss on the album “Different Strokes.” At the age of 12, she began performing with songwriter/bassist John Pennell in the band Silver Rail, which later became known as Union Station. Alison signed with Rounder Records in 1986, and the 16-year-old released her debut solo album, “Too Late to Cry,” the following year. The first Alison Krauss & Union Station album, “Two Highways,” was released in 1989, and Alison’s 1990 solo album, “I’ve Got That Old Feeling,” reached #61 on the “Billboard” Top Country Albums chart and earned Krauss a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Recording. In 1992, Alison Krauss & Union Station released the album “Every Time You Say Goodbye,” and Alison followed it with the 1994 album “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow,” which she recorded with The Cox Family. “Every Time You Say Goodbye” won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. In 1993, Krauss became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and in 1994, she had her first top 10 hit when she performed on the Grammy-winning Shenandoah song “Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart,” which reached #7 on the “Billboard” Hot Country Songs chart.In 1995, Alison covered the song “When You Say Nothing at All” for “Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album,” and it reached #3 on the Hot Country Songs chart.” Next, Alison Krauss & Union Station released the 1997 Gold album “So Long So Wrong,” which reached #4 on the Top Country Albums chart, and Alison’s 1999 album “Forget About It” went Gold and peaked at #5 on the Top Country Albums chart and #60 on the “Billboard” 200 chart. Alison Krauss & Union Station released another Gold album, “New Favorite,” in 2001, and it reached #2 on the Top Bluegrass Albums chart and #3 on the Top Country Albums chart and won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. The band’s 2004 album “Lonely Runs Both Ways” reached #1 on the Top Bluegrass Albums chart and was certified Gold. That year Alison also performed on the 2× Platinum Brad Paisley song “Whiskey Lullaby,” which reached #3 on the Hot Country Songs chart and #41 on the “Billboard” Hot 100 chart. In 2007, Krauss collaborated with Robert Plant on the album “Raising Sand,” which was certified 2× Platinum in the U.K. and Platinum in the U.S. and Canada. The album reached #1 in Norway and #2 in the U.S. (on both the country chart and the “Billboard” 200 chart), the U.K., and Sweden, and it won six Grammys, including Album of the Year.In 2011, Alison Krauss & Union Station released the album “Paper Airplane,” which reached #1 on the Top Country Albums and Top Bluegrass Albums charts. Alison’s 2017 solo album “Windy City” reached #1 on the Top Country Albums chart and #9 on the “Billboard” 200 chart, and in 2021, she teamed back up with Plant for the album “Raise the Roof.” The album reached #3 on the Top Country Albums chart and the Norwegian record chart and #7 on the “Billboard” 200 chart. When the 2023 Grammy nominations were announced in November 2022, the list included two for Alison and Robert’s second collaboration, Best Americana Album and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for the song “Going Where the Lonely Go.” Krauss has also been featured on numerous soundtracks, including “Cold Mountain,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” and “Twister.” Both songs she performed on the “Cold Mountain” soundtrack, “The Scarlet Tide” and “You Will Be My Ain True Love,” were nominated for Academy Awards.Personal LifeAlison married musician Pat Bergeson on November 8, 1997, and they welcomed son Sam Patrick Bergeson in 1999. Krauss and Bergeson divorced in 2001. Alison received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Boston’s Berklee College of Music in 2012.Awards and NominationsKrauss has been nominated for 60 Grammys, winning 41 of them. She won Academy of Country Music Awards for Vocal Event of the Year and Video of the Year for “Whiskey Lullaby” (with Brad Paisley) in 2004, and at the 2008 Americana Music Honors and Awards, Alison and Robert Plant were named Duo/Group of the Year, and “Raising Sand” earned the Album of the Year award. Krauss and Natalie MacMaster shared a Canadian Country Music Award for Vocal/Instrumental Collaboration of the Year for “Get Me Through December” in 2001, and Alison won Gospel Music Association Dove Awards for Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year for “Living Prayer” in 1998 and “Children of the Living God” in 2006. She received CMT Music Awards for Collaborative Video of the Year for “Whiskey Lullaby” in 2005 and Wide Open Country Video of the Year for “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” which she recorded with Plant, in 2008.Krauss has won eight Country Music Association Awards: Female Vocalist of the Year, the Horizon Award, Vocal Event of the Year for “Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart” (with Shenandoah), and Single of the Year for “When You Say Nothing At All” in 1995, Album of the Year for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” in 2001, Musical Event of the Year and Music Video of the Year for “Whiskey Lullaby” in 2004, and Musical Event of the Year for “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)” in 2008. Alison has also won more than a dozen International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, and she was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2021.
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