Arthur Rock (born August 19, 1926) is an American businessman and investor. Based in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, California, he was an early investor in major firms including

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

, Apple,

Scientific Data Systems Scientific Data Systems (SDS), was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky and Robert Beck, veterans of Packard Bell Corporation and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of ...

and

Teledyne Teledyne Technologies Incorporated is an American industrial conglomerate. It was founded in 1960, as Teledyne, Inc., by Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky. From August 1996 to November 1999, Teledyne existed as part of the conglomerate A ...

Early life

Rock was born and raised in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

, in a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family.Harvard Business School: "ARTHUR ROCK"
retrieved October 8, 2015 He was an only child and his father owned a small candy store where Rock worked as a youth. He joined the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

during World War II but the war ended before he was deployed. He then went to college on the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, b ...

. He graduated with a

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six y ...

business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...

from Syracuse University in 1948 and earned an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

in 1951.

Career

Rock started his career in 1951 as a securities analyst in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, and then joined the corporate finance department of Hayden, Stone & Company in New York, where he focused on raising money for small high-technology companies. In 1957, when the "

traitorous eight The traitorous eight was a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor. William Shockley had in 1956 recruited a group of young Ph.D. graduates with the goal to develop and produce ...

" left

Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology company in what came to be known as Silicon Valley to w ...

, Rock was the one who helped them find a place to go: he convinced

Sherman Fairchild Sherman Mills Fairchild (April 7, 1896 – March 28, 1971) was an American businessman and investor. He founded over 70 companies, including Fairchild Aircraft ( Fairchild Aviation Corporation), Fairchild Industries, and Fairchild Camera and In ...

to start

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...

. In 1961, he moved to California. Along with Thomas J. Davis Jr., he formed the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

venture capital firm Davis & Rock. Rock was a member of

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

's board when

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a m ...

was ousted in the mid 1980s. In 2003, Rock donated $25 million to the

to establish the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

Politics

Rock has donated to many political causes, especially in the area of education. He has donated to more than 30 school board elections across the country. Recently, in 2021, he donated over $500,000 to the

2022 San Francisco Board of Education recall elections The 2022 San Francisco Board of Education recall elections (also called the San Francisco school board recall elections) were held on February 15, 2022. Voters had the option to remove each of three San Francisco Board of Education (School Boa ...

Awards

* 1987 EY Entrepreneur of The Year Award Recipient, Northern California Region * 1989 Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...

Personal life

He is married to lawyer Toni Rembe. Together with his wife, Rock has been a supporter of Teach For America. The organization's annual Social Innovation Award is named in their honor. Rock was portrayed by actor

J. K. Simmons Jonathan Kimble Simmons (born January 9, 1955) is an American actor, considered one of the most prolific and well-established character actors of his generation. He has appeared in over 200 films and television roles since his debut in 1986. He i ...

in the 2013 biographical drama '' Jobs''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rock, Arthur 1926 births Living people American billionaires American computer businesspeople American financial analysts American investors Jewish American philanthropists Philanthropists from New York (state) Harvard Business School alumni Martin J. Whitman School of Management alumni Private equity and venture capital investors Businesspeople from Rochester, New York Directors of Apple Inc. United States Army personnel of World War II 21st-century American Jews