Pierre Omidyar

Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar, June 21, 1967) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist, he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar is the grandson of the Imperial Iranian Army General Mahmud Mir-Djalali, who was instrumental in the 1921 rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty, the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, and the building out of Iran's Mechanized Artillery Forces and Defense Industries. As of August 2026, Forbes ranked Omidyar as the 255th-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $12.5 billion. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004, becoming a long-term Democratic Party donor. Since 2010, he has been involved in online journalism as the head of investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat. In 2013, he announced that he would create and finance First Look Media, a journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill.