Super Bet pots carried over if no winners were found, growing in size like a Mega Millions lottery until someone finally won. Yass and his team of Pennsylvania-based traders had identified a rarity in the world of horse racing: A bet where the odds skewed heavily in the gambler’s favor.īack then, Sportsman’s Park offered what’s called a “Super Bet,” a jackpot that could be won if gamblers successfully picked the winning order of three consecutive horse races. On this day, however, he was on his way to Sportsman’s Park, a horse racing track built by Al Capone on the outskirts of Chicago, with a few friends and $250,000 in rolled up hundred-dollar bills stuffed into duffel bags. In July 1985, Yass was a 27-year-old trader based in Philadelphia, with a knack for quickly calculating the value of options contracts. To understand how Yass got rich, start at the racetrack. He loves to figure things out, and he loves to win." Bloom, a cofounder of the firm who left amicably in the mid-1990s to start his own firm. "Susquehanna is one of the most remarkable stories in the business world that has never been told and is really not well known," says Steven H. Yass initially did not respond to requests seeking an interview and didn’t comment on our estimates. 184 on Forbes’ 2021 list of the World’s Richest People. We estimate that his firm and its portfolio of investments are worth well over $30 billion and put his net worth conservatively at $12 billion, landing him at No. Susquehanna has even become a force in the trading of cryptocurrencies.įorbes spent more than two months digging into his vast holdings, speaking to former Susquehanna insiders, reviewing hundreds of securities filings, regulatory disclosures and court documents. The operation also stakes bets on elections and won big on Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 Presidential election.
There’s more: Susquehanna is becoming a powerhouse in making markets for sports bets through its Dublin-based trading unit called Nellie Analytics. in China, and Credit Karma and Payoneer in the United States. His firm is now among the 20 largest investors in venture capital-backed companies in the world, according to some estimates, owning tens of billions worth of investments spread across China, Israel and the United States and large stakes in tech companies like Agora Inc. Yass has used Susquehanna’s trading profits to invest in early-stage growth companies around the world, like TikTok parent company ByteDance, the world’s most valuable private company.
It’s also regularly among the top-five market makers in U.S. Today, Susquehanna commands nearly 10% of the market making volume in exchange traded funds, moving over 130 million shares daily in 50 countries around the world. At age 63, Yass has built Susquehanna into a global giant without taking a penny of outside capital.