| Jeffrey J. Rothschild | |
| Birth Name: | Jeffrey Jackiel Rothschild |
| Birth Date: | February 28, 1954 |
| Known For: | Founding engineer, Facebook |
| Education: | Vanderbilt University (BS, MS) |
| Occupation: | Businessman |
| Spouse: | Marieke Rothschild |
| Children: | 3 |
Jeffrey Jackiel Rothschild (born February 28, 1954) is an American billionaire who co-founded several companies. He is the founding engineer and a large shareholder of Facebook. Despite his name, he is not a member of the Rothschild banking family.
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. 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 family.[5]
Rothschild worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Intel, and then for a consulting firm that worked on projects such as Locus Computing Corporation.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.[6] [7] In 1999 he became an advisor and venture partner at the venture capital firm Accel Partners.[8]
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]
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]
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]