Steve Wozniak

Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, and grew up in San Jose, California, in the area that would become the heart of Silicon Valley. Fascinated by mathematics and electronics from an early age, he earned a ham radio license at 11, built his first computer at 13 and was known as an electronics prodigy in high school.⁠[1][1][2][3]

He later recalled that his father told him an engineer could change the world and the way of life for many people, and he still regards engineers as among the key people in the world.⁠[1][1]

He briefly attended the University of Colorado Boulder before returning to the San Francisco Bay Area to study at the University of California, Berkeley; in 1971, during his senior year, he left school to join Hewlett-Packard.⁠[1][4]

At 19 he met 14-year-old Steve Jobs. Together they built an electronic “blue box” that could hack the public telephone network to make free long-distance calls.⁠[3]

With Allen Baum, the two also planned a prank for Jobs’s high school graduation, spending four nights rigging ramps on the roof of a two-story building to unfurl a large banner as graduates filed out. The banner came down the night before; Wozniak later learned that Jobs had told other seniors about the plan, and they cut the fishing line.⁠[5][5][5]

At Hewlett-Packard, Wozniak designed calculator chips, worked on his own designs in his spare time and frequented the Homebrew Computer Club. In 1975 he began developing his first major project, the Apple I personal computer.⁠[2][4][1]

He had wanted Hewlett-Packard to make the personal computer. In a 2026 interview he recalled, “Five times they turned me down for the personal computer. I wanted Hewlett-Packard to do it. I loved my company, but now Steve Jobs and I had to go into business.”⁠[6][6][6]

On April 1, 1976, Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer; Wozniak and Jobs were both in their 20s. Wayne soon withdrew, giving up his 10 percent stake for $800. He later explained that if the business failed, creditors would come after him because Jobs and Wozniak had no assets, and he could not bear that risk.⁠[6][7][7][6][6]

The Apple I was first shown at the Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park and was aimed at hobbyists. An order from a local store for 50 assembled units convinced Jobs there was a market for personal computers. The Apple I was a bare circuit board with no power supply or case that had to be connected to a keyboard and a television; it went on sale in July 1976 for $666.66.⁠[3][3][1][8]

In 1977 Wozniak introduced the more refined Apple II, with a central processing unit, built-in keyboard, color graphics and a floppy disk drive in a consumer-friendly case. Strong Apple II sales turned Apple into a large company; Wozniak is listed as the sole inventor on four Apple patents.⁠[1][2][3][3][2]

The Heinz Awards citation of 2001 described him as the only person to have designed both the hardware and the software of a computer platform that became a huge commercial success, and called him the single most important person in the microcomputer revolution. In 1979 he received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.⁠[4][4][2]

On December 12, 1980, Apple held its initial public offering on the Nasdaq, selling 4.6 million shares at $22 each. The shares sold out almost immediately, creating about 300 millionaires.⁠[9][9]

Wozniak later wrote that when Apple decided not to reward early friends who had helped, he gave them large blocks of his own stock, and that he made it possible for 80 other employees to buy shares before the IPO so they could share in the wealth.⁠[10][10]

After a plane crash, Wozniak stepped away from day-to-day work at Apple and in 1981 returned to the University of California, Berkeley to continue his studies, enrolling as “Rocky Raccoon Clark” to avoid attention. The crash also kept him from working with the Macintosh team.⁠[11][2][12][13]

He founded Unuson, short for “unite us in song,” which staged the US Festival in San Bernardino, California, in 1982 and 1983. Originally meant to celebrate emerging technologies, the events became a combined technology exposition and rock festival bringing together music, computers and television.⁠[2][2][2]

In 1983 he sponsored the first three US–Soviet “space bridge” television links; in 1987 he sponsored the first joint US–Soviet stadium rock concert in Moscow; and in 1990 he funded computers for Soviet schools through a US–USSR initiative.⁠[2][2][2]

In 1985, for his achievements at Apple, Wozniak and Steve Jobs received the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan, the highest honor the United States bestows on innovators.⁠[2][2][3]

After his return from Berkeley and the festivals, Wozniak went back to Apple as an engineer. In 1985 he founded CL 9 to build the first programmable universal remote control, leaving day-to-day work at Apple.⁠[11][2]

It has long been said that he quit because he was unhappy with Jobs or the company. Wozniak has denied this, saying he never quit but simply left to develop a remote control on his own, and that “there was a lot of mistaken publicity along the lines that I left because of things that I didn’t like there and it’s totally wrong.” He says he never left Apple’s official employee list, and the Computer History Museum’s fellow profile also notes that he remains an Apple employee.⁠[14][14][11][3]

On May 17, 1986, Wozniak received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.⁠[12][1]

He has since received ten honorary doctor of engineering degrees, the first from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1989.⁠[2][2]

In the late 1980s Wozniak “adopted” the fifth through eighth grades of his local Los Gatos School District, giving students portable computers, wiring the school for the internet and teaching computer skills to students and teachers himself. He has said that being able to teach somebody to do something means more than doing it yourself.⁠[4][4][4]

By 1996 he had built 11 computer labs for the Los Gatos Unified School District, planned and wired its school and district networks, and taught classes for teachers as well as about 200 hours a year of classes for fifth graders.⁠[2][2]

In 1990 Mitch Kapor, John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, with assistance from Wozniak, founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to work on civil liberties issues raised by new technologies.⁠[15][2]

Around the same time he became the first major sponsor of the Tech Museum in San Jose and a founding sponsor of the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and Silicon Valley Ballet.⁠[2][1]

In 1998 he was named a Computer History Museum Fellow for co-founding Apple Computer and inventing the Apple I personal computer. In 1999 the City of San Jose named a street “Woz Way” in his honor, and in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley that year he was portrayed by Joey Slotnick.⁠[3][2][2]

In 2000 Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the personal computer (U.S. Patent No. 4,136,359). In 2001 he received the 7th Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment, for single-handedly designing the first personal computer and then redirecting his passion toward sparking excitement about education among grade school students and their teachers.⁠[1][4][4]

Also in 2001 he founded Wheels of Zeus (WOZ) to develop wireless GPS technology.⁠[2]

In 2006 he co-authored the memoir iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon, published by Norton, which became a New York Times bestseller.⁠[2][2]

From 2008 Wozniak served as chief scientist of the flash storage company Fusion-io, which went public in 2011.⁠[16][16]

In 2009 he competed on season 8 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, partnered with Karina Smirnoff. He has also appeared as himself on television shows including The Big Bang Theory, appearing with his wife, Janet, in a season 4 episode in 2010.⁠[2][2]

After the biopic Jobs opened in August 2013, Wozniak posted a review on the tech site Gizmodo saying much of the film was inaccurate, suggesting its problems came from star and producer Ashton Kutcher’s own image of Jobs, and saying he felt bad for people he knew who were portrayed wrongly. Kutcher accused him of disparaging the film because he was being paid to consult on a rival Jobs film, and said he had been unavailable during production.⁠[10][10][10][10]

Wozniak called Kutcher’s statements “disingenuous” and “wrong,” writing that either film would have paid him to consult but that Jobs already had a finished script, that he could not take creative leadership from someone else, and that he was turned off by the script. He had met with Aaron Sorkin, who was adapting Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs; that film, Steve Jobs, was released in 2015 with Seth Rogen as Wozniak.⁠[10][10][10][10][2]

On February 17, 2014, in Los Angeles, IEEE President and CEO J. Roberto de Marca presented Wozniak with the 66th Hoover Medal, given to an engineer whose professional achievements and personal endeavors have advanced the well-being of humankind and administered by a board of five engineering societies. That year he was also inducted into the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Hall of Fame.⁠[17][17][2]

On November 19, 2014, the data virtualization company Primary Data announced that Wozniak had joined as chief scientist.⁠[18]

In 2015 the Cal Alumni Association named him Alumnus of the Year, and the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose gave him its Legacy for Children Award, which honors people whose legacy has significantly benefited children’s learning and lives.⁠[2][2]

In 2015 Wozniak and comic book creator Stan Lee announced they would launch Silicon Valley Comic Con in San Jose the following March. The first event, in March 2016, closed with a session featuring organizer Wozniak and Stan Lee, moderated by his business partner Rick White.⁠[19][20][20]

In October 2017 Wozniak co-founded Woz U, a postsecondary education and training platform focused on software engineering and technology development. At launch he described it as a “digital institute” meant to help people gain computer science skills for high-paying technology jobs and to make technology less intimidating.⁠[2][21][21]

Woz U now offers technology training programs and a registered apprenticeship program, and works with employers on hiring and with training providers on certification.⁠[22][22][22]

In 2018 Wozniak deleted his Facebook account and recommended that “most people” do the same.⁠[23]

On October 15, 2018, in London, Wozniak announced that he had become a co-founder of the venture capital technology company EQUI Global, joining its founder Doug Barrowman and co-founder Michelle Mone.⁠[24][24]

In an August 2019 interview with Bloomberg News, Wozniak said large technology companies were using monopoly power in unfair, anticompetitive ways and that he was “pretty much in favor of looking into splitting up big companies,” Apple included; he wished Apple had long ago spun off independent divisions the way Hewlett-Packard did when he worked there. Big Tech, he said, had become too big and too powerful a force in people’s lives and had taken their choices away.⁠[25][25][25][25]

His main concern was whether technology companies are honest with their users, and he felt companies such as Facebook had not been; at the same time he praised Apple’s expansion into services and said he loves Apple Pay for its ease and security.⁠[25][25][25]

On July 21, 2020, Wozniak and 17 scam victims sued YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry and Google in San Mateo County Superior Court. The plaintiffs alleged that scammers hijacked popular YouTube channels, including Wozniak’s, to stream fake events in which a tech celebrity promised to double any cryptocurrency sent to them; that Wozniak’s name and likeness had been used in the scam since at least May 8, 2020; and that the 17 other plaintiffs lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency. They argued the companies knowingly hosted, promoted and profited from the scam.⁠[26][26][26][26][26][26][26]

After the case was transferred to Santa Clara County Superior Court, the trial court held that the claims were barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, sustained the defendants’ demurrer and denied a motion to lift a discovery stay.⁠[26][26][26]

On December 4, 2020, Wozniak launched Efforce, a company he co-founded, as a blockchain-based platform for financing energy efficiency projects: businesses can make efficiency upgrades at no cost while investors share in the resulting energy savings through WOZX tokens. WOZX had been listed on hbtc.com the day before; Efforce said its market capitalization reached $950 million within 13 minutes, ten times the listing price, compared with an $80 million valuation from investors in private sales.⁠[27][27][27][27][27][27]

Wozniak said people could protect the environment without changing their habits simply by making more energy improvements, and described Efforce as the first decentralized platform to let everyone take part in and benefit financially from energy efficiency projects worldwide.⁠[27][27]

On March 15, 2024, the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District held that most of the plaintiffs’ claims sought to treat YouTube as a publisher of third-party content and were therefore barred by Section 230, but that allegations that YouTube materially contributed to the scam by giving verification badges to hijacked channels could potentially fall outside that immunity. The court reversed the judgment and remanded the case, directing the trial court to let the plaintiffs amend their claims related to verification badges.⁠[26][26][26][26][26][26]

On January 16, 2026, Wozniak received the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award, presented each year by The Tech Interactive, a science museum in San Jose. On X he thanked Applied Materials for the award, mentioned seeing old friends such as John Sculley, and said he was inspired by the 80,000 children who discover STEM at the museum each year.⁠[28][29][29][29]

Ahead of Apple’s 50th anniversary, Wozniak told the Los Angeles Times that Apple had always been flexible and that its success came from managing its brand well and not making “lousy junk” that breaks down. He also warned that AI can create “deepfakes” that make people appear to say things they did not, and that people are absorbed in scrolling videos instead of spending time with family and friends: “The world is run by people who want to sell things. They’re not going to let us get away from that.”⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

On September 30, 2026, Wozniak announced a limited run of 3,000 garments marking 50 years since he built the Apple I, to support the Inspiring Children Foundation, a cause he and his wife, Janet, care about.⁠[30][30][30][30]

On October 2, 2026, Wozniak attended Supabase Select, a conference held in San Francisco by the database development platform Supabase. He had announced on September 16 that he would attend, and on October 3 he wrote on X: “Thank you, Supabase, for such an incredible event! I had a wonderful time meeting everyone and sharing stories.” Several attendees posted on X that he shared his thoughts on values, AI and stories from building Apple, and signed items for attendees.⁠[31][32][33][31]

Wozniak is a co-founder of Privateer, whose chief executive and chairman is Alex Fielding and whose chief scientist is Moriba Jah; its Elements product combines land, sea, air and space data to provide geospatial intelligence analytics.⁠[34][34]

Wozniak lives in Los Gatos, California, with his wife, Janet. A self-described lifelong prankster, he plays Segway polo and likes Tetris on the Game Boy; his X bio reads “Engineers first!” and lists human rights, gadgets, jokes and pranks, Segways, and music and concerts. He became a Freemason in California in 1980 and remains a lifetime member, though not active.⁠[2][2][35][35][2]

Wozniak lists human rights among his interests in his X bio. In 1984 he was a delegate for Gary Hart at the Democratic National Convention. He often speaks critically about the technology industry, including calling for a look at breaking up Big Tech, deleting Facebook, and voicing concern about AI deepfakes and digital addiction.⁠[35][2][25][6]

Steve Wozniak: Official website: https://woz.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[35]

Steve Wozniak: Public account: https://x.com/stevewoz (opens in a new window)⁠[35]

Woz U: Official website: https://woz-u.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Privateer: Official website: https://www.privateer.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]