Tom Steyer

Thomas Fahr Steyer (; born June 27, 1957) is an American businessman, philanthropist, and environmentalist. He is the founder of Farallon Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, as well as NextGen America, a progressive political action committee, and Galvanize Climate Solutions, a climate change-centered investment firm. A member of the Democratic Party, he unsuccessfully ran for the party's nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election. According to Forbes magazine, Steyer's net worth stood at $2.4 billion as of April 2026.

Steyer is a graduate of Yale University (BA) and Stanford University (MBA). He is the founder and former co-senior managing partner of Farallon Capital. Following his departure from the company in 2012, he became an advocate for climate action and founded NextGen America. His book, Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War, appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2024.

A billionaire, Steyer has been one of the largest donors in American Democratic Party politics, using his wealth to fund both environmental causes and political campaigns. In 2020, he ran for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. After spending $253 million on his campaign, he withdrew from the race in February 2020 without having received any pledged delegates. In 2025, Steyer announced his candidacy in the 2026 California gubernatorial election to succeed term-limited governor Gavin Newsom. Steyer spent more than $215 million on his gubernatorial campaign. On June 2, 2026, he finished in third place in California's nonpartisan primary, failing to advance to the general election.

Steyer was born on June 27, 1957, in Manhattan, New York City. His mother, Marnie (née Fahr), was a teacher of remedial reading at the Brooklyn House of Detention and his father, Roy Henry Steyer, was a partner in the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell and was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. His father was Jewish and his mother was Episcopalian.

Steyer grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and attended the Buckley School. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy as valedictorian of his class. Steyer then graduated from Yale University summa cum laude in economics and political science. At Yale, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was captain of the soccer team, and was a member of the Wolf's Head Society. Steyer received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

After graduating from Yale, Steyer began his professional career at Morgan Stanley in 1979 and spent two years there. Steyer worked at Goldman Sachs from 1983 to 1985 as an associate in the risk arbitrage division, where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions. Steyer also worked for San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman.

In January 1986, Steyer founded Farallon Capital, a hedge fund firm headquartered in San Francisco. Steyer founded Farallon with $15 million in seed capital. He named the firm after the Farallon Islands off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1987, Steyer, a Yale alumnus, approached the university's endowment fund and asked that it allocate funds for Farallon to manage. After initially declining, Yale later arranged with Steyer for Farallon to manage an allocation of the Yale endowment for no fee.

An article noted that Farallon has a management company in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore company created in large part to help nonprofits, including Yale, avoid paying taxes Steyer wrote in a letter to investors.

In 2002, Farallon bought control of Bank Central Asia (BCA), an Indonesian financial institution, for $531 million. Farallon sold its stake for a profit in 2006.

In 2006, Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, founded OneRoof, Inc., a B Corp and social enterprise business designed to bring broadband connectivity, computer literacy, and employment skills via OneRoof Internet Centers to small rural towns in rural India and Mexico.

In 2007, Steyer and Taylor founded Beneficial State Bank, a community development bank, for the purpose of providing commercial banking services to underserved Bay Area businesses, nonprofits, and individuals, with operations now in California, Oregon, and Washington. Its stock ownership is entirely held by a foundation such that all profits are reinvested in local communities. Steyer and Taylor put up $22.5 million to start the bank and create the One PacificCoast Foundation to engage in charitable and educational activities, provide lending support, investments, and other services for disadvantaged communities and community service organizations in California.

In August 2010, Steyer and his wife signed onto The Giving Pledge, an initiative of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. In 2011 Steyer founded Advanced Energy Economy, an energy research and lobbying group with Hemant Taneja, an Indian-born American venture capitalist.

Steyer and Taylor created the TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, California, near Half Moon Bay. The ranch is meant to research and demonstrate a sustainable way of doing agriculture. The ranch's activities include underwriting healthy food programs and co-producing an independent film, La Mission, starring Benjamin Bratt, about San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. Around 2011, Steyer joined the board of Next Generation, a nonprofit intending to tackle children's issues and the environment. In 2013, Steyer founded NextGen Climate, an environmental advocacy nonprofit and political action committee.

In August 2015, Steyer launched the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality and Middle Class Opportunity, which was intended to advocate policies for promoting income equality.

In 1983, Steyer worked on Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. He raised money for Bill Bradley in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

When Republican party candidate Richard Riordan ran for Governor of California in 2002, Steyer made two $25,000 campaign contributions (for a total of $50,000) to Riordan's campaign. However, Steyer did not electronically file any Major Donor Campaign Statements disclosing the campaign contributions that he made to the Republican gubernatorial candidate Riordan.

An early supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2008, Steyer became one of Barack Obama's most prolific fundraisers. Steyer served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 2004 and 2008.

Steyer has been a member of the Hamilton Project and has been involved with the Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive donors whose membership in the group requires them to donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended organizations.

Steyer has been active in California politics, particularly in ballot initiative campaigns. In 2010, Steyer joined the former Secretary of State, San Francisco-based George Shultz, to co-chair the No on Prop. 23 campaign. Proposition 23, backed by a coalition including conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, aimed to overturn California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Steyer donated $5 million to the No on Prop. 23 campaign, which succeeded with a margin of 61%.

After holding several conversations during the summer of 2012 with environmental writer Bill McKibben, Steyer decided to focus much of his attention on the Keystone Pipeline. Steyer officially left Farallon in 2012. He was criticized by some Republicans for attacking the pipeline even though he held some investments in the fossil-fuel industry. The investments included stock in Kinder Morgan, which had its own pipeline connecting the Canadian bitumen sands to a port on the Pacific, which could be seen as a rival to the Keystone pipeline. Steyer promised to fully unload his holdings there within a year. In September 2013, Steyer appeared in a series of commercials in opposition to the proposed pipeline.

In 2008, Steyer and Taylor gave $41 million to create the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University. Part of the Precourt Institute of Energy, it is focused on the development of affordable renewable energy technologies, and promotion of public policies to make renewable energy more accessible. Projects included the creation of lighter, less toxic, and more durable batteries, and an analysis of the then-current power grids capacities to support future renewable energy technologies.

In October 2013, Steyer launched a bipartisan initiative to combat climate change along with then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The initiative, called the Risky Business Project, focuses on quantifying and publicizing the economic risks of climate change in the United States. Bloomberg, Paulson, and Steyer serve as co-chairs. The Project has published three reports: a National Report in June 2014, a Midwest Report in January 2015, and a California Report in April 2015.

In 2015, Steyer signed on to the Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The goal of the coalition is to jumpstart the demand and availability of green energy sources.

In a 2026 article on X and Substack, Steyer said that he wants to abolish ICE, "counter ICE head on," "fight fire with fire," and to treat ICE like the Mob by "put[ting] ICE agents and their leadership in jail for their crimes." Independent media coverage of the proposal is limited. Steyer said that he would do this by drafting legislation to end racial profiling, allowing the state Attorney General to criminally prosecute and imprison ICE agents and their leadership, investing in California's immigration legal defense infrastructure, and educating immigrants on their rights.

Steyer has received a number of awards and honors for his environmental work, including the Phillip Burton Public Service Award of Consumer Watchdog (2011), the Environmental Leadership Award of the California League of Conservation Voters (2012), the Environmental Achievement Award of the Environmental Law Institute (2013), and the Land Conservation Award of the Open Space Institute (2015).

Steyer received Equality California's 2015 Humanitarian Award "for his work advancing progressive causes that benefit the LGBT community."

In August 1986, Steyer married Kathryn Ann Taylor, a graduate of Harvard College who earned a Master of Business Administration and a Juris Doctor from Stanford University. Kathryn was on the President's Council for the United Religions Initiative, an interfaith group. The Reverend Richard Thayer, a Presbyterian minister, and Rabbi Charles Familant performed the ceremony. They have four children.

Steyer has two brothers: Hume Steyer, an attorney in New York City; and Jim Steyer, who founded Common Sense Media.