Michael Moritz
Sir Michael Moritz KBE (born 1954) is a Welsh-born American billionaire venture capitalist and philanthropist best known for his 38-year tenure at Sequoia Capital, where he spearheaded early investments in transformative technology firms including Google, PayPal, and LinkedIn.[1][2] Educated at Christ Church, Oxford (BA) and the Wharton School (MBA), Moritz began his career as a journalist, serving as bureau chief for Time magazine in San Francisco, before joining Sequoia in 1986 and rising to partner.[1] His prescient backing of internet pioneers yielded enormous returns, cementing his reputation as one of Silicon Valley's most astute investors and contributing to Sequoia's management of over $53 billion in assets.[2] In 2023, Moritz departed Sequoia to concentrate on Sequoia Heritage, the independent $15 billion wealth-management arm he co-founded in 2010, while retaining board seats at high-growth companies like Stripe and Instacart.[2] A U.S. citizen residing in San Francisco, he is married to author Harriet Heyman, with whom he has two children.[1] Moritz's philanthropy emphasizes educational access; he and Heyman donated £75 million to Oxford in 2012—the largest gift to the university at the time—to fund scholarships covering tuition and living costs for undergraduates from low-income backgrounds as part of a broader £300 million financial aid initiative.[3] He received a knighthood in 2013 for contributions to charity and economic development.[1]