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I'm not sure that's evidence that he still has that kind of wealth. To quote Elon Musk: "If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, sta

• seanp2k2 8y ago
  FWIW that phrase has been around for a long time. It’s fairly common in the aviation industry, but it’s used in others as well: https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke
• adventured 8y ago
  Three strong counter points to that. 1) id Software sold to Zenimax for $150 million. [1] John Carmack was a large shareholder at the time and claimed a year ago that Zenimax still owes him another $22.5 million. Adrian Carmack owned 41% of id when he was fired & bought out of the company in 2005. From that ownership consolidation, it's very likely John had 1/3 or more of the company when it was sold to Zenimax. 2) Oculus was purchased for $2 billion. $400m in cash and 23 million shares of Facebook. Those shares would now be worth $4.2 billion. Carmack owned a position in Oculus pre the Andreessen Horowitz investment. A 1% stake would have been a substantial windfall. 3) He earned a large amount of money from being an owner of id Software from the Wolfenstein days forward. According to Wired, he put $8m into Armadillo before closing it down. The id sale alone covers that cost at least twice over after taxes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zenimax-owes-me-22-5m-as-part-of-2009-id-software-deal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zen...