Fred Luddy (born 1954) is an American

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

businessman, and the founder of

ServiceNow ServiceNow, Inc. is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California, that supplies a cloud computing platform for the creation and management of automated business workflows. It is used predominantly for the automation of informati ...

, a cloud computing company.

Early life

Luddy grew up in New Castle, Indiana, the son of an accountant father and a Catholic schoolteacher mother. Luddy went to

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

, but dropped out, as he was spending too much time doing computer programming.

Career

In 2004, his then net worth of $35 million was lost due to an accounting fraud at his previous company, Peregrine Systems, of which he was the CTO. Luddy founded ServiceNow two weeks before his 50th birthday, "I couldn't wait, because there was something psychologically that said I couldn't start a company at 50." Luddy stepped down as CEO of ServiceNow in 2011, then focused on product development, and moved to an advisory role in 2016. As of October 2023, Luddy's net worth was estimated at $1.2 billion.

World Team Tennis

Luddy acquired a majority ownership of the San Diego Aviators in 2015. He currently serves of the Chairman of the Board of the team. In 2017, Luddy was part of a purchase of

World Team Tennis World TeamTennis (WTT) was a mixed-gender professional tennis league played with a team format in the United States, which was founded in 1973. The league's season normally took place in the summer months. Players from the ATP and WTA would ...

from

Billie Jean King Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943), also known as BJK, is an American former World number 1 ranked female tennis players, world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam (tennis), Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in w ...

. He is now a majority owner with Eric Davidson.

Philanthropy

Luddy Hall at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington was named in recognition of a donation from Luddy, and "in honor of the many IU alumni in the Luddy family, including Fred's mother, father, sister and two brothers".

Awards

In 2023, Fred Luddy received the Horatio Alger Award

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luddy, Fred 1954 births Living people American technology company founders American billionaires People from New Castle, Indiana Place of birth missing (living people) Indiana University Bloomington alumni American sports owners Philanthropists from Indiana