Carl Edwin Berg (born 1938) is an American businessman,

real estate investor Real estate investing involves the purchase, management and sale or rental of real estate for profit. Someone who actively or passively invests in real estate is called a real estate entrepreneur or a real estate investor. Some investors actively ...

and

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

. He has been included in ''

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 re ...

'' magazine's list of the 400 richest people in America several times, and in March 2013 his

net worth Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Since financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, net ...

was estimated at $1.1 billion.

Early life

Carl Berg was born and raised in

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

. He has one brother, Clyde Berg, also a real estate developer.

Career

Berg worked as a loan officer in Texas and then moved to California in the 1970s where he took a job running a mortgage company in

Sunnyvale Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north ...

.Silicon Valley Business Journal: "Carl Berg a man on a mission" by Katherine Conrad
July 25, 2010 In California, he partnered with real estate agent, John A. Sobrato, and pooling their owned capital, founded Midtown Realty. In 1979, they re-focused their business on building industrial campuses for the tech industry.

Investments

Berg acquired Mission West Properties

Real Estate Investment Trust A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...

in 1997, and sold it to realty developer Divco West in December 2012 for $1.3 billion. Berg has invested in more than 100 technology startups. He began by investing in companies that were tenants of his Silicon Valley office buildings, occasionally trading office space for company stock. Berg's technology investments include the consulting firm International Network Services, which he bought from

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

in 2002. He is a major investor in Verifyme, Inc. He is a major investor in Valence Technologies, owning 52% of the company and serving as chairman in 2011. He has also invested in Summit Semiconductor, and is on the board of directors of

LynuxWorks Lynx Software Technologies, Inc. (formerly LynuxWorks) is a San Jose, California software company founded in 1988. Lynx specializes in secure virtualization and open, reliable, certifiable real-time operating systems (RTOSes). Originally known as ...

. Berg is also one of the founders of Berg LLC, also known as Berg Health, a biopharma company using AI approaches. In 2014, Berg invested in the development of a new

prostate cancer Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that sur ...

test through BERG LLC.

Personal life

Berg is married, with one daughter, and resides in

Atherton, California Atherton () is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 7,188 as of 2020. Atherton is known for its wealth; in 1990 and 2019, Athe ...

. In 1982, Berg's wife and daughter were kidnapped, escaped unharmed, and the perpetrators were caught.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berg, Carl E. 1938 births Living people 20th-century American Jews American real estate businesspeople Private equity and venture capital investors People from Atherton, California American billionaires People from New Mexico 21st-century American Jews