Jeffrey J. Rothschild

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

Jeffrey J. Rothschild
Born	Jeffrey Jackiel Rothschild February 28, 1954
Education	Vanderbilt University (BS, MS)
Occupation	Businessman
Known for	Founding engineer, Facebook
Spouse	Marieke Rothschild
Children	3

Early life

Rothschild is the son of Beverley and William B. Rothschild.^[1] His father was president of M. Rothschild & Company, an importer of commodities from South East Asia founded by his grandfather, Marcus Rothschild.^[1] He received bachelor's and master's degrees from Vanderbilt University in 1977 and 1979, respectively.^[2][3] He is of Jewish descent.^[4] He is not a member of the Rothschild banking family.^[5]

Career

Rothschild worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Intel, and then for a consulting firm that worked on projects such as Locus Computing Corporation.^[6] Rothschild co-founded Veritas Software in 1988.^[5] He co-founded Mpath Interactive in 1995, which became a public company in 1999.^[5]

Rothschild is listed as co-inventor on several MPath patents.^[7][8] In 1999 he became an advisor and venture partner at the venture capital firm Accel Partners.^[6]

In 2003, Rothschild co-founded Mendocino Software, with fellow former-Veritas executives Peter Levine and Steve Colman.^[9][10] Mendocino shut down quietly by March 2008.^[11][12]

Rothschild started working for Facebook in 2005.^[5] He was the oldest person working for Facebook at the time.^[5] He became Facebook's vice president of infrastructure software.^[5] In 2012, he owned 18 million Facebook shares.^[5]

Other activities

Rothschild serves as the vice chair of the board of trustees of his alma mater, Vanderbilt University.^[13][14] With his wife, he endowed two scholarships in the School of Engineering 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.^[15]

Personal life

Rothschild and his wife Marieke have three children, and live in Palo Alto, California.^[5] According to Forbes, Rothschild is worth about $2.9 billion as of May 2022.^[16]