Nvidia just became the first company ever worth $5 trillion, meaning those who own even just a fraction of a percent of the high-flying stock are now super rich. The latest to join the billionaire club: 77-year-old venture capitalist and longtime Nvidia board member Brooke Seawell, who Forbes estimates is now worth $1.1 billion as of 10 a.m. Wednesday. Almost all of that wealth comes from his 0.02% stake in Nvidia, which was worth just $50 million five years ago; now it’s worth $900 million.
Seawell joined Nvidia’s board in 1997, when he was executive vice president at NetDynamics, an application server software company that was acquired by Sun Microsystems a year later. He joined venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures as a partner in 2000 and moved five years later to New Enterprise Associates, where he remains a venture partner today. During his 50-year career as an operating executive and VC, he’s been involved in 12 IPOs, including Nvidia and data visualization company Tableau, as well as 13 acquisitions. He is also a director of publicly-traded cybersecurity company Tenable Holdings and solar financing startup GoodLeap.
In addition to his 0.02% Nvidia stake, Forbes estimates that Seawell has also netted more than $100 million after tax from exercising Nvidia options over the years and selling the underlying shares. That includes more than $75 million raked in during 2025 alone. Seawell, who has a bachelor’s degree and MBA from Stanford, lives in Atherton, California, where he owns a nearly 10,000 square-foot home, with seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms, which Forbes estimates is worth $20 million. Seawell confirmed in an email to Forbes that he and his heirs have a fortune of over $1.1 billion.
Before attending business school, Seawell served for three years in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant running a computer programming group. He is an avid cyclist who has taken two dozen cycling vacations around the world.
Nvidia now boasts six billionaire backers, including Seawell and three other venture capitalists and long-time board members: Mark Stevens (estimated fortune: $11.8 billion), Tench Coxe ($8.9 billion) and Harvey Jones ($2 billion). Nvidia’s chief financial officer Colette Kress also joined the three-comma club earlier this year and is now worth an estimated $1.1 billion. The richest Nvidia billionaire by far is cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, who boasts an estimated $184 billion fortune, making him the eighth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker.
Seawell’s fortune stretched into ten digits Wednesday morning, when Nvidia’s shares climbed by 5% as of 10 a.m. after the company announced the latest in a string of high profile-deals on Tuesday: a $1 billion investment in Nokia that will help the Finnish telecom giant use AI to transition from 5G to 6G. President Trump also told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday morning that he may speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Nvidia’s chips when the two heads of state meet on Thursday. Those developments helped boost Nvidia’s market cap to a record $5.1 trillion as of 10 a.m. The company, which became the first firm to hit a $4 trillion market cap in July, has seen its shares soar by 50% this year amid the AI boom, which has generated a surge in demand for Nvidia’s chips.
Nvidia has also struck AI infrastructure deals earlier this year with companies like OpenAI and Oracle. These agreements, which are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, have been criticized by some for their seemingly circular nature, leading many to speculate about an AI bubble bursting. But, for now at least, Seawell and his five fellow billionaires from Nvidia are sitting pretty on Forbes’ ranking of the world’s richest people.
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