Jeffrey Jackiel Rothschild (born February 28, 1954) is an American billionaire who co-founded several companies. He is the founding engineer and a large shareholder of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

. Despite his name, he is not a member of the Rothschild banking family.

Early life

Rothschild is the son of Beverley and William B. Rothschild.New York Times: "WILLIAM ROTHSCHILD Obituary"
December 1, 2015 His father was president of M. Rothschild & Company, an importer of commodities from South East Asia founded by his grandfather, Marcus Rothschild. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

in 1977 and 1979, respectively.Engineering alumnus elected to Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust
Vanderbilt University School of Engineering, May 1, 2014Jeffrey J. Rothschild
''Bloomberg Business'' He is of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

descent.

Career

Rothschild worked as an engineer at

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

, and then for a consulting firm that worked on projects such as

Locus Computing Corporation Locus Computing Corporation was formed in 1982 by Gerald J. Popek, Charles S. Kline and Gregory I. Thiel to commercialize the technologies developed for the LOCUS distributed operating system at UCLA. Locus was notable for commercializing si ...

. Rothschild co-founded

Veritas Software Veritas Technologies LLC. is an American international data management company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company has its origins in Tolerant Systems, founded in 1983 and later renamed Veritas Software. It specializes in stor ...

in 1988.Ryan Mac
Meet New Billionaire Jeff Rothschild, The Engineer Who Saved Facebook From Crashing
''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'', February 28, 2014 He co-founded

Mpath Interactive Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998, was a free online PC gaming service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001. The service at its peak was host to a community of more than 20 million visitors each month and offere ...

in 1995, which became a public company in 1999. Rothschild is listed as co-inventor on several MPath patents. In 1999 he became an advisor and venture partner at the

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...

. In 2003, Rothschild co-founded Mendocino Software, with fellow former-Veritas executives Peter Levine and Steve Colman. Mendocino shut down quietly by March 2008. Rothschild started working for

in 2005. He was the oldest person working for Facebook at the time. He became Facebook's vice president of infrastructure software. In 2012, he owned 18 million Facebook shares.

Other activities

Rothschild serves as the vice chair of the board of trustees of his alma mater,

.Vanderbilt University Board of Trust: Members
/ref> With his wife, he endowed two scholarships in the

School of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education ( bachelor's and/or master's degree), and any advanced education and specializations tha ...

and the College of Arts and Science in 2013, and he donated $20 million for the construction of two new buildings on campus, Vanderbilt Hall and Barnard Hall, in December 2016.

Personal life

Rothschild and his wife Marieke have three children, and live in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

. According to ''Forbes'', Rothschild is worth about $2.9 billion as of May 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothschild, Jeffrey J. 1950s births Living people People from Palo Alto, California Vanderbilt University alumni Facebook employees American company founders American billionaires American philanthropists