Pierre Omidyar: Founder of eBay

Pierre Omidyar: Founder of eBay

Business Owner · Retail & E-commerce

Honolulu

Pierre Omidyar founded eBay and chaired it from 1998 to 2015, then created Omidyar Network, Honolulu Civil Beat and First Look Media.

About Pierre Omidyar: Founder of eBay

Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar on June 21, 1967, in Paris) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire, technology entrepreneur, software engineer and philanthropist, the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. As of August 2026 Forbes ranked him the 255th-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $12.5 billion. Omidyar was born in Paris to Iranian parents who had immigrated to France for higher education; his mother, Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar, earned a doctorate in linguistics at the Sorbonne, and is the daughter of General Mahmud Mir-Djalali, who was instrumental in the 1921 rise of the Pahlavi dynasty. He and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004 and he has been a long-term Democratic Party donor. Since 2010 he has headed the investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat, and in 2013 he announced he would create and finance First Look Media, a journalism venture including Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. Sources: English Wikipedia (Pierre Omidyar, accessed September 2026).

Basic Information

Founder, eBay; founder, Omidyar Network

Company Details

eBay / Omidyar Network

E-commerce, Philanthropic Investing, Journalism