TOM STEYER

Steyer grew up in New York, son of a corporate lawyer. He went to Yale, then Stanford Business School, then joined Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

In 1986, he founded Farallon Capital Management in San Francisco.

Farallon became one of the best-performing hedge funds in the world. It specialized in event-driven and value investing across stocks, bonds, real estate, and private equity.

At its peak, the fund managed over $20 billion. Steyer personally made billions in management and performance fees.

In 2012, he stepped down from Farallon to focus full-time on politics and climate activism. He founded NextGen America, a political advocacy group focused on climate change.

He spent over $70 million on the 2014 midterm elections alone. Then in 2019, he announced he was running for president.

He spent approximately $340 million on his campaign and dropped out after the South Carolina primary in February 2020. He won zero states.

Since then, he’s focused on climate investing through Galvanize Climate Solutions, a firm that invests in companies addressing climate change.

Farallon Capital Management was his hedge fund empire. Founded in 1986 with a few million dollars, it grew to over $20 billion in assets.

The fund invested across everything — stocks, bonds, real estate, distressed debt, private equity. It was one of the most consistently profitable multi-strategy funds in the industry.

NextGen America is his political advocacy organization, focused primarily on climate change and voter turnout among young people. He’s pumped hundreds of millions into it.

Galvanize Climate Solutions is his current venture — a climate-focused investment firm that backs companies working on decarbonization, clean energy, and sustainable infrastructure. He’s essentially trying to use the investing skills that made him rich to address the climate crisis.

At Farallon, Steyer was a classic multi-strategy investor. He looked for value across asset classes — if a distressed bond was cheap, he’d buy it.

If a real estate deal had an unusual angle, he’d pursue it. The approach was fundamentally opportunistic — go where the best risk-adjusted returns are.

He was patient and methodical. Farallon wasn’t a swing-for-the-fences fund.

It aimed for consistent mid-teens returns with low volatility. The magic was in the breadth — by investing across so many different areas, the fund could always find opportunities even when one market dried up.

Now at Galvanize, his investing style has a climate filter on top. He’s looking for the same fundamental value but within the lens of decarbonization.

Building Farallon Capital from scratch in 1986 to over $20 billion in assets. The fund delivered annualized returns of approximately 15% over two decades with remarkably low volatility.

One of Farallon’s best trades was a massive position in Indonesian assets during the 1998 Asian financial crisis — buying when everyone else was selling and riding the recovery for enormous gains. The fund also made significant profits from real estate investments and distressed debt during multiple market dislocations.

The 2020 presidential campaign. By any financial measure, spending $340 million to win zero states is a catastrophically bad investment.

Steyer didn’t even make it to Super Tuesday in a meaningful way. His campaign never gained traction because voters simply weren’t interested in another billionaire telling them he understood their problems.

Within his investing career, Farallon faced criticism for some of its investments in coal and fossil fuels — a particular irony given Steyer’s later reinvention as a climate activist. Environmental groups called him a hypocrite.

He eventually divested and pledged to give away his climate-related gains, but the optics were damaging.

Steyer believes in finding value where others see chaos. At Farallon, this meant investing in distressed situations, emerging markets in crisis, and complex multi-asset deals.

The principle is simple: when everyone is panicking, the best prices are available.

He also believes, more recently, that climate change is the defining investment opportunity of the next century. He thinks the companies that solve decarbonization will be the Amazons and Googles of the 2030s and 2040s.

Whether he’s right about that is still TBD.

Steyer is married to Kathryn Taylor, who he met at Morgan Stanley. They have four children.

The family lives in San Francisco. Taylor has been active in civic affairs and education reform.

The Steyers are one of the most politically active billionaire couples in America — which puts them in a surprisingly competitive field.

Yale University for undergrad, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. Then Stanford Graduate School of Business for his MBA.

The Yale-to-Stanford pipeline is basically the assembly line for California-based hedge fund founders. He also briefly taught at Stanford’s business school.

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