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Here are details on each of the 10 largest landowners in Silicon Valley, including the value of their total ownership, based on Santa Clara County assessor’s data for 2018.
Stanford University, $19.7 billion
Former California Gov. Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, opened their university in 1891 in honor of their son, who had died of typhoid. Leland Stanford chose the location in what is now Palo Alto in part because he was seeking a town that banned the sale of alcohol, according to KQED.
Besides being the largest landowner in Santa Clara County in terms of dollar value for its 5,178 acres, it also owns about 3,000 acres in San Mateo County and has a $27.7 billion endowment. The campus also now sells alcohol.
Apple, $9.0 billion
Apple was founded in 1976 by two legendary figures in Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — plus Ron Wayne, who sold his extremely early stake in the company back to the Steves 11 days later for $800.
The company formed in Cupertino, where it remains, although it has shifted its headquarters from 1 Infinite Loop to Apple Park, known popularly as “the spaceship.” The cost to build the ring-like office and companion buildings has been estimated at more than $1.1 billion. The company had $62.9 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018. Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ widow, has a net worth estimated at $21.3 billion.
Google, $7.5 billion
Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google in 1998 with a $100,000 investment from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The company, originally named BackRub, moved in 1999 from Palo Alto to Mountain View, where it eventually developed its large office campus. The company began buying chunks of downtown San Jose, quietly at first through real estate partner Trammell Crow, in late 2016.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, made $39.27 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018. Page and Brin are the sixth and seventh wealthiest people in the country, according to Forbes, with net worths estimated at $55.5 billion and $53.5 billion, respectively.
The Irvine Company, $5.9 billion
The company got its start in Southern California when James Irvine and some business partners purchased a large ranch in what is now Orange County. In 1960, the Irvine Company began developing the land for housing, and by 1971 the city of Irvine was incorporated. Today, the company owns 550 office buildings and 125 apartment complexes, mostly in Orange County. In Silicon Valley the company’s properties include Santa Clara Square, a mixed-use development with apartments, offices and retail space on Montgomery Drive and the McCarthy Center, a 68-acre office park in Milpitas.
In 1977, homebuilder Donald Bren and five investors, including the daughter and granddaughter of James Irvine, purchased the Irvine Company. By 1996, Bren was its sole owner. Forbes estimates his net worth at $17 billion, making him the wealthiest real estate developer in the country.
Jay Paul Co., $3.5 billion
Jay Paul founded his eponymous company in 1975 after saving his father’s Southern California-based investment bank from failure, according to Finance & Commerce. He has specialized in office space and his buildings are home to companies including Google, Microsoft and Apple. The San Francisco-based company has been on a recent shopping spree in downtown San Jose, buying up several properties including the 50 West office tower featuring KQED’s sign.
Jay Paul has developed 11 million square feet of commercial real estate, according to its website. Among the company’s best known properties are Moffett Towers and Moffett Place in Sunnyvale, and 181 Fremont in San Francisco. Paul’s net worth is estimated at $3.5 billion.
Cisco Systems, $3.4 billion
Cisco was founded in 1984 by a husband-and-wife team that wanted to send each other electronic messages at Stanford. In the process they invented routers, a key piece of technology for the modern internet, according to Wired.
Originally headquartered in San Francisco — hence the “cisco” — it’s now based in northern San Jose, near the border with Milpitas where it owns a large office campus. The company had $12.84 billion in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Essex Property Trust, $3.1 billion
George Marcus, who immigrated to the U.S. from Greece at a young age, formed Essex in 1971 — the same year he founded Marcus & Millichap, a real estate brokerage firm. Today Essex is publicly traded and owns about 59,700 apartments through the West Coast. It had about $1.4 billion in revenue in 2018, according to official filings.
Marcus, still the company’s chairman, has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. In 2018, Marcus and his wife Judy donated $25 million to their alma mater, San Francisco State University, the largest gift in school history. Marcus has also been a major political donor, mostly to Democratic and liberal causes.
Intel Corporation, $2.5 billion
Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, two former employees of Fairchild Semiconductors. The company would go on to revolutionize computing with microprocessor chips. Chips became a massive industry locally, putting the silicon in Silicon Valley.
The company owns three office parks in San Jose and Santa Clara, where it is headquartered. It had $18.7 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The Sobrato Organization, $2.5 billion
John A. Sobrato founded his real estate development company in 1978. He got his start on single family homes and by working with his mother, Ann Sobrato, who also built a successful real estate development business in the Peninsula.
Sobrato has developed offices for technology luminaries such as Apple and Netflix and since the 1990s has also diversified into multifamily housing. In 2018, the company was named the top corporate philanthropist in the Bay Area by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, giving $60.1 million to nonprofits in the region. The Sobrato family net worth is estimated at $6.7 billion.
Prometheus Real Estate, $2.0 billion
Sanford Diller, the son of Jewish Austrian immigrants, founded the residential development company Prometheus in 1965 after years of practicing law in San Francisco. He eventually grew the company into an empire with about 13,000 apartments in California, Oregon and Washington, according to the company’s website, becoming a billionaire along the way. Many of the company’s apartments are in Mountain View and Cupertino, hubs of Silicon Valley’s tech industry.
Diller passed away in 2018, the same year the Helen Diller Foundation, which he created with his wife, made a $500 million donation to the University of California, San Francisco. Today the company is run by his daughter, Jackie Safier, making it the only female-led top 10 landowner in Silicon Valley.
This series was produced by The Mercury News, East Bay Times, NBC Bay Area, KQED, Renaissance Journalism, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and Telemundo 48 Área de la Bahía.
