Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is an American business magnate, entrepreneur, and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc., the largest technology company in the world by revenue. Jobs is also a member of Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019, where he had served as a director since 2006.
Jobs was born in San Francisco and raised in Cupertino, California. He studied physics and astronomy at Reed College but chose to drop out after one semester to pursue a career in electronics. He took a job at Atari before starting his own computer company called Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Wozniak in 1976. The company was successful from its inception; by 1980 it had become the fastest-growing company in US history with sales increasing fourfold year over year. In 1983, Jobs was forced out of Apple due to disagreements with its board of directors over his vision for the future direction of the company; he subsequently founded NeXT Inc., another computer platform development company which he sold to Apple for $429 million eight years later.
In 1996, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs took a leave of absence from Apple before returning several months later to announce his resignation as CEO due to health concerns. He remained Chairman of the Board until his death on October 5, 2011 aged 56. Following his death investors revealed that they had lost confidence inApple’s ability to continue innovating without him and shares fell sharply; however within weeks they recovered as new CEO Tim Cook reassured them that Jobs had left behind a “clear vision” for the future direction of the company.
During his lifetime Jobs was widely recognized as both a pioneerin consumer electronics and early personal computing as well as a charismatic figurehead for his companies whose design aesthetic has been described as “the perfect marriage of form and function”. His work helped shape modern digital cultureand contributed significantlyto shaping popular conceptionsof personal computers during the 1980s and 1990s .He has been referred toas “the ultimate visionary”,a “master showman”and “one man who changed everything”.