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With a net worth of about $148 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ballmer is now just shy of overtaking his old boss, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who sits at $154 billion.

A look back at Ballmer’s illustrious career reveals the secrets behind his success, but it wasn’t always so glamorous. At 24, Ballmer dropped out of Stanford Business School to join Microsoft and Gates, his former Harvard classmate. As the company’s 30th employee, Ballmer netted a base salary of $50,000.

The small tech startup quickly became one America’s fastest-growing companies, overtaking the incumbent Apple and dominating the growth of personal computers in the 1990s by developing Windows, an easy-to-use operating system. Ballmer took over for Gates during a key moment of transition, in 2000, managing through the aftermath of a famous antitrust case that dated back to 1998, as well as the aftermath of the dot-com crash and the emergence of fierce competition from rivals both new and old: Google and Apple.

Ballmer tripled Microsoft’s annual revenue to nearly $78 billion during his tenure, and profits swelled to $22 billion during his last full fiscal year as CEO, but the stock didn’t reflect its dominance. In retrospect, Ballmer set the stage for a stunning comeback in the decades since. Microsoft now ranks 13th on the Fortune 500, while its market capitalization has conquered all others: It’s the most valuable company in the world, at $3.2 trillion.

Ballmer still holds an estimated 4.5% stake in Microsoft, and has seen its value soar even further, following his successor Satya Nadella’s bet on OpenAI. In 2021, Ballmer became the ninth person in the world to report a net worth of more than $100 billion, and Ballmer is the only centibillionaire to make his fortune as an employee, not as an entrepreneur.

After thanking employees for the “time of my life” in an emotional farewell presentation in 2014, Ballmer set his sights on other entrepreneurial adventures. The same year, he bought the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion (Forbes now values the franchise at over $4.5 billion).

Since leaving Microsoft, Ballmer has leaned heavily into philanthropy. He donated nearly $2 billion to a donor-advised Goldman Sachs Philanthropy fund focused on economic mobility in 2018. More recently, he invested $400 million to support Black-owned businesses in 2022; $43 million in the early childhood education workforce in Washington State last March; and last September he announced a $175 million investment over the next seven years, aimed at helping 4 million young people, especially in communities of color who face systemic inequalities, along the path to economic mobility.

In one of his final interviews as Microsoft’s CEO in 2013, Ballmer sat down with Fortune to share some of his biggest tips for success.

“If the CEO doesn’t see the playing field, nobody else can,” Ballmer said in the 2013 interview with Fortune. “The team may need to see it too, but the CEO really needs to be able to see the entire competitive space.”

Microsoft’s variety of products, like cloud services and personal computing, touch a lot of different markets and competition seems to lurk around every corner. During his stint as CEO, he faced criticism for not adapting quickly enough to changing market trends. Competitors in mobile devices, like Samsung and Nokia, and cloud computing services, like Google and Apple, were on the rise. Microsoft’s stock was stagnating in the years leading to his retirement in 2014. Still, Microsoft’s revenue nearly quadrupled under his watch.

While at Microsoft, Ballmer hired some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, like Steven Sinofksy, who headed Windows; J Allard, who served as chief technology officer of Xbox; and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect.

In a 2009 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ballmer said in order “to be dynamic,” companies should aim to promote internal workers “70% or 80% of the time,” and when a company wants to take on outside hires, they should be “open-minded” and ask for references.

In interviews for potential new hires, the two biggest qualities he looks for are passion that he “can see in the eyes,” and someone he can relate to. One of his favorite questions to ask is “tell me about something you’re proud of.”

At Microsoft, the name of Ballmer’s game was rethink, rethink, rethink.

“There was a day when people said all the money is in software; get out of hardware,” he told Fortune in 2013. Hardware was what Apple and Samsung, Microsoft’s biggest rivals at the time, were also profitable in. In 2013, Apple recorded 170.9 billion in revenue. Google recorded $55.5 billion. “Then somebody will say, ‘oh, it’s all about advertising,’” which is what its rival, Google, was making bank on.

“The playing field is always changing,” he said, and the sentiment holds true in his current endeavors on the basketball court.

A decade after buying the Clippers, Ballmer is still thinking creatively about how to revamp the franchise. He’s been signing–and retaining–superstars like Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook to form a quartet of stars in preparation for the Intuit Dome grand opening in August, Forbes reported, the team’s future home court and the setting of the 2026 NBA All-Star weekend.

This month, he launched a new brand, Halo Sports and Entertainment, which will feature the new dome, the LA Clippers, their G-league affiliate team called the Ontario Clippers, and KIA Forum, a music and entertainment arena in Inglewood, which he purchased in 2020.

“Getting the big things right that make all the money, that’s long cycle,” Ballmer told Fortune in 2013, emphasizing that “really executing in a way that allows you to do it, that’s short cycle.”

One of the long-term projects he’s chipped away at is USAFacts, a database that collects and analyzes how federal, state and local governments generate revenue and spend money. The database also includes reports users can run to gather information on topics ranging from tax rates to rates of overdoses and crime across the country.

The site brands itself as a “non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative,” with no “political agenda or commercial motive.”

“I obviously understand the business stuff better than the technology stuff,” Ballmer concluded in the 2013 interview, but adding, “I’ve grown, and when you grow, you say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.’”

One joke theory related to his limitations has cropped up: it’s what Urban Dictionary calls the Ballmer Peak, or the “theory that computer programmers obtain quasi-magical, superhuman coding ability when they have a blood alcohol concentration percentage between 0.129% and 0.138%.” The theory is loosely tied to Ballmer—but has inspired a San Francisco organization, Originate, to organize a Ballmer Peak-A-Thon: an open bar event where people have “5 hours to find the elusive Ballmer peak, and build the best worst business possible.” The bar provides “plenty of sill domain names” to kick off the party.

The fast fashion giant occupies a shrinking middle ground between Shein and Zara. New CEO Daniel Ervér has an opportunity to lay out a path forward when the company reports quarterly results this week.

When Daniel Ervér was named chief executive of H&M Group in January, the appointment was widely received as a surprise, and not necessarily a good one. The company’s problems are well-documented at this point: H&M has struggled in a post-Shein world, occupying the rapidly shrinking middle between ultra-cheap online competitors and Zara’s “upscale” fast fashion.

Why, if the brand is so beset by problems it required the sudden ouster of its CEO, did it go with a relatively unknown insider? In interviews after his appointment, Ervér did little to clear up the confusion. He spoke to the need to “react quicker” to new trends, à la Shein, but also sell more high-priced items, like Zara.

Perhaps we’ll get some more concrete answers this week. H&M reports results for the three months ending Feb. 29 on Wednesday. Ervér isn’t wrong to take a few cues from rivals. Consumers clearly prefer Shein’s all the trends, all the time approach to H&M’s seasonal view on fashion. And while the chain has been closing stores to cut costs, its many brick-and-mortar locations remain a key advantage over the online-only competition. Zara-owner Inditex demonstrated as much earlier this month when it reported record sales of €35.9 billion ($39 billion) in 2023, up 10.4 percent. It also remains to be seen whether Ervér will have the same commitment to sustainability as his predecessor, Helena Helmersson, who aimed to pitch H&M as an unlikely (and often controversial) champion of green fashion. Pricey programmes to deliver on this ambition would be a tempting target for budget cuts.

That side of the business is probably safe though. For better or worse, Ervér, who has worked at H&M for nearly two decades, represents continuity, not change. Plus, fast fashion is currently villain No. 1 in European politics. France’s proposal to tax cheap clothes like cigarettes is the latest indication that rhetoric around the ecological costs of fast fashion is starting to have real teeth. Now is the time to burnish those sustainability credentials, not toss them.

Speaking of, the fate of Renewcell, a now-bankrupt H&M-backed fabric recycling start-up, will be decided this week. The company was seen as a pioneer in the field, and had scaled its production capacity, only to falter in face of uncertain demand. Bids are due on March 28.

Fossil fuel groups and investors cannot afford to ignore the warnings

Talk about unfortunate timing. At the start of last week, the head of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, was applauded when he told the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston it was time to “abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas”. Amin Nasser said the world needed instead to invest in fossil fuels to meet demand at a time when the clean energy transition was “visibly failing on most fronts”. 

One day later, the head of the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Saulo, received no applause for issuing a report that showed climate records had been not just broken but smashed in 2023, the hottest year on record. More than 90 per cent of the world’s oceans suffered heatwave conditions, glaciers lost the most ice on record and the extent of Antarctic sea ice fell to by far the lowest levels ever measured.

It is tempting to believe we have been here before. Oil, gas and coal executives have spent years insisting they must satisfy demand for the fossil fuels that still drive the global economy. More recently, even relatively more green-minded European oil companies have weakened their climate goals in the wake of soaring energy prices, and big investors have backed away from climate action initiatives that they only recently joined. UN agencies have warned all the while that those fuels are the biggest cause of a climate warming that is growing more intense.  

Yet when it comes to the physical state of the climate, we have not been here at all. To an extent not widely appreciated, the world is now warming at a pace that scientists did not expect and, alarmingly, do not fully understand. At a Financial Times conference this month, Jim Skea, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said last year’s spike in temperatures was “quicker than we all anticipated”.

“It was a surprise,” he said. “Ocean temperatures were just off the scale in terms of historic records. It was completely unusual and we still need to do more work to explain it.”

The unnerving implications of these findings were spelt out last week by Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Writing in the journal Nature, Schmidt warned that the data could imply that a warming planet was already “fundamentally altering how the climate system operates”. The surprising heat in 2023 had “come out of the blue”, he said, and revealed that “an unprecedented knowledge gap” had opened up for the first time since satellite data began to give scientists a real-time view of the climate system about 40 years ago.

This gap may mean we have a shakier grasp of what lies ahead — which is worrying when it comes to forecasting drought and rainfall patterns that are already aggravating food shortages. Theories for the unexpected warming range from a rise in solar activity ahead of a predicted solar maximum to new rules on cleaner shipping fuel that aim to cut sulphur emissions. Sulphur compounds in the atmosphere have a cooling effect.

But a full explanation remains elusive, which underlines a compelling echo of history. Schmidt’s position at Nasa was once held by another scientist, James Hansen, whose 1988 testimony to the US Congress alerted the world that global warming had begun. 

The world did not entirely ignore Hansen’s warnings in the 36 years that followed, but nor did it take them anywhere near seriously enough. Oil company bosses may prefer to preach a message of business as usual. But neither they nor anyone else can afford once again to downplay what science is showing us about a climate threat that is now moving into uncharted territory.

EDITORIAL - L’ex-ministre de la Santé, apôtre de la lutte contre la désertification médicale, va faire de la médecine esthétique aux Champs Élysées ! Un outrage à l’éthique.

« Effarant ! », « Minable ! », « Honteux ! »… Olivier Véran, l’ex-ministre de la Santé redevenu député de l’Isère, a réussi à faire l’unanimité des médecins — et des patients — contre lui. À raison : il ne pouvait choisir pire que d’exercer en médecine esthétique, et au cœur même de Paris, lui, le neurologue qui s’était fait l’apôtre de la lutte contre la désertification médicale. Le voilà qu’il va s’adonner une fois par semaine, en sus de son mandat d’élu, à cette spécialité ultra-lucrative dans laquelle versent beaucoup de nouveaux praticiens au détriment des besoins sanitaires du pays dont l’ex membre du gouvernement n’avait cessé pourtant de célébrer l’importance vitale. À commencer par sa propre spécialité, la neurologie qu’il délaisse donc, mais pas pour la psychiatrie, la gériatrie ou la pédiatrie qui, parmi d’autres, manquent de bras et de têtes, mais qui ne sont pas d’un égal rapport financier ! Et c’est le même responsable politique qui prétend prendre la tête du combat contre l’extrême-droite alors qu’il décrédibilise ainsi par avance sa propre parole.

Olivier Véran, ou comment ruiner la cause qu’on prétend servir.

Champion autoproclamé de la lutte contre l’extrême-droite

Le lifting de l’ancien ministre est quoi qu’il en soit totalement raté ! La photo pourtant était bonne (dans le Figaro) en boxeur, lui aussi, comme le président de la république, mais prétendant « soigner sa gauche », puisqu’il vient originellement du PS. Il n’hésite d’ailleurs pas à se montrer jusque dans les travées de l’Assemblée nationale sans chemise ni cravate, une veste sur un tee-shirt. Nouveau look afin qu’on l’écoute mieux s’autoproclamer champion de la lutte contre l’extrême-droite, lui qui n’hésitait pas à « aller au contact » dans les villes tenues par « l’ennemi ». Il promettait même de réaliser un guide du routard de ces cités à reconquérir.

La touche ultime du chevalier blanc Véran : il annonçait reprendre sa blouse de médecin, ce qui laissait à penser qu’il se mettrait vraiment au service de la France en souffrance. Et patatras… Direction la clinique des Champs Elysées ! Médecine et chirurgie esthétique pour ceux qui peuvent payer. Cher. Rapport très lucratif assuré dans un domaine qui n’était pas le sien. Mais la neurologie avait « évolué », plaide-t-il, alors que, pour sa nouvelle spécialité, il va devoir suivre des cours de formation à l’université. Argument on ne peut plus fallacieux, et aggravé par son plaidoyer pour « une médecine (esthétique) à ne pas dénigrer, puisqu’elle aide ceux qui souffrent en raison d’une cicatrice sur le visage ou d’une calvitie précoce ». Certes… Encore que, d’expérience, on peut certifier qu’être chauve permet de ne plus être obsédé par la perte des cheveux…

Désertification médicale

Mais plus sérieusement, l’ancien ministre de la Santé ne va pas exercer gratuitement. Ce secteur esthétique est précisément celui qui contribue tout particulièrement à la désertification médicale contre laquelle Véran avait entrepris de mobiliser tous les corps médicaux pourtant surchargés.

Va-t-on bientôt manquer de médecins à Paris ?

En 2021, Olivier Véran alors ministre de la Santé avait promis qu’en 2026, il en serait fini de cette désertification médicale. On en est très loin puisque 87 % du territoire français est frappé de ce mal et qu’il y contribue donc en donnant le plus mauvais des exemples parisiens, lui, grenoblois ! S’il avait choisi de quitter la politique pour faire de l’argent, on aurait juste relevé la contradiction avec ses engagements passés. Mais là, le même homme prétend aussi prendre la tête de la croisade contre le Rassemblement National qui campe si seul dans la défense du social. Il va se faire déchirer. À juste titre. On ne peut détruire plus sûrement une légitimité.

Aucune médecine esthétique ne pourra réparer ni même masquer cet outrage à l’éthique.

More debt, different buyers and increased regulation pose challenges

The world’s largest, most-important financial market is growing by leaps and bounds. On Wall Street, that is making people nervous.

Annual issuance of U.S. Treasurys has exploded, nearly doubling since the pandemic began. The government sold a record $23 trillion worth in 2023. And few think the spree is going to slow soon, given the widespread expectation that government spending will continue to rise regardless of who wins November’s elections.

Rapid growth in markets from tech stocks to mortgage bonds has ended badly in the past. Treasurys are considered the safest and easiest-to-trade securities on Wall Street, and many worry that any instability there could rapidly spread.

The market’s growth isn’t the only thing troubling investors: Some are also concerned about new rules that are changing the way the trading works. That could help alleviate strains but also create unforeseen consequences, such as the cash shortages in 2019 and 2020 that snarled trading and boosted interest rates.

“None of these regulations solves the mounting pile of Treasury debt,” said Steven Kelly, associate director of research at the Yale Program on Financial Stability.

The mounting pile

When the government doesn’t take in enough from taxes to fund its spending, the Treasury Department issues bonds to fill the gap. The agency raised a net $2.4 trillion last year to finance the deficit, taking into account what it had to sell to repay holders of maturing debt.

The Treasury market has grown more than 60% to $27 trillion since the end of 2019. It is roughly sixfold larger than before the 2008-09 financial crisis.

“Running a nearly $2 trillion deficit during a peacetime economic expansion—that’s a lot of bonds for the market to absorb,” said Stephen Miran, an adjunct fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a former Treasury Department senior adviser who assisted with the Covid-19 response.

The Congressional Budget Office anticipates government spending that continues to climb in the coming years, with an aging population raising the cost of programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Rising interest costs could also boost issuance.

Mounting bond sales sparked market turmoil last fall, prompting the Treasury to shift toward selling more short-term debt. The amount of bills—those with maturities of one year or shorter—has risen to 22.4% of debt outstanding, above the recommended 20% limit set by the borrowing committee that advises the government.

Since then, demand has been more than adequate. Investors still aren’t requiring extra compensation to hold longer-term Treasurys. The so-called term premium is actually negative.

One reason demand for Treasurys remains solid: fewer alternatives. Many companies issued long-term bonds when the pandemic sent rates near zero, then slowed borrowing when the Fed started raising them. The market for mortgage-backed securities is nearly frozen, with few Americans moving in the most expensive housing market in decades.

Different buyers

Banks have pared their buying of Treasurys for years, constrained by postcrisis regulations that are poised to get even more restrictive. Hedge funds, money-market funds and foreign investors are now America’s primary financiers.

Money-market funds are enjoying record inflows and scooping up short-term Treasurys in bulk. But they are mandated to only invest in bills.

HeyGen, a three-year-old startup that uses artificial intelligence to generate avatars and voices for videos, is raising $60 million at a pre-investment valuation of $440 million, six times higher than the startup’s valuation four months ago, according to a person with direct knowledge of the round. Benchmark, the early-stage venture capital firm that bet early on Snap and Uber, is leading the round, which has not yet closed, the person said.

The startup’s ties to China have put it at odds with U.S. officials, who are increasingly concerned with Chinese investment in American technology. HeyGen, originally named Surreal, was founded in China during the coronavirus pandemic but is now headquartered in Los Angeles. Its early funding came from Chinese investors such as HongShan, previously known as Sequoia Capital China, and ZhenFund.

• Longtime Benchmark general partner Peter Fenton is leading the deal

• The deals values startup at about 22 times its forward revenue

• HeyGen has tried to distance itself from its Chinese investors

HongShan’s investment in HeyGen raises concerns about a Chinese entity having “influence over a U.S.-based company developing technology with significant national security implications” due to the possibility of fake texts or videos, said a recent report by the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. HeyGen’s customers include Salesforce, Nvidia and Amazon, according to its website.

To mollify potential political critics, HeyGen says its customer terms and conditions forbid the use of its technology for political campaigning or lobbying purposes, the person said. And in November last year, when it raised funds in a round led by VC firm Conviction, a representative of HongShan relinquished the Chinese firm’s seat on HeyGen’s board of directors, the person said.

HeyGen is generating more than $20 million in annualized revenue, or last month’s revenue multiplied by 12, up from $3 million in July and $1 million a year ago, the person with direct knowledge of its finances said. That kind of growth stands out among generative AI startups, many of which have been struggling to make money despite raising lots of capital. And its new valuation of about 22 times its forward revenue is relatively low compared to the valuation multiples of many other generative AI startups. (See our Generative AI Database.) At the same time, the startup has relied in part on AI voice technology from another startup, New York-based ElevenLabs, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Longtime Benchmark general partner Peter Fenton and Victor Lazarte, the firm’s newest general partner, are leading the new funding deal, the person said. HeyGen CEO Joshua Xu and Fenton, known for his early investments in Twitter and Yelp, did not respond to a request for comment.

Xu, a former software engineer at Snap, and Wayne Liang, who briefly worked as a product designer at TikTok-parent ByteDance, founded HeyGen in late 2020. It has around 40 employees, according to LinkedIn.

HeyGen differentiates itself from rivals such as Pika Labs and Genmo by targeting business customers such as marketers and salespeople. It faces competition from other business-focused video startups such as Synthesia and Runway.