# Thomas Siebel

Thomas M. Siebel (/ˈsiːbəl/; born November 20, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman, technologist, and author. He founded the enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software platform and applications company.
He is the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company with interests in investment management, commercial real estate, agribusiness, and philanthropy.

## Early life and education

Siebel was born in Chicago, one of 7 children of Arthur Francis Siebel, a Harvard-educated lawyer, and Ruth A. (née Schmid) Siebel. Siebel is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he received a BA in history, an MBA, an MS in computer science, and an honorary doctorate of engineering.

## Business career

Between 1984 and 1990, Siebel was an executive at Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of management positions. Siebel served as CEO of Gain Technology, a multimedia software company that merged with Sybase in December 1992. Siebel is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Siebel Systems, which was acquired by Oracle in January 2006. Siebel is the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company.

### Siebel Systems

Siebel Systems was a software company primarily engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications. As an executive at Oracle Corporation, Siebel proposed the idea of creating enterprise software applications for marketing, sales, and customer service functions. Oracle management declined his proposal. In 1993, Siebel left Oracle and founded Siebel Systems. In 1999, Siebel Systems became one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the United States. Siebel Systems grew to over 8,000 employees in 32 countries, more than 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue greater than $2,000,000,000 before merging with Oracle in January 2006.

## Management philosophy

In 2019, Siebel initiated a program at C3.ai that pays 100 percent of the costs for employees to complete an online master's degree of computer science (MCS) program from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Employees who complete the MCS degree receive a salary increase of 15 percent, a cash bonus of $25‚000, and additional stock options.

## Honors and awards

Siebel has held advisory and board positions at institutions including Stanford University, the University of Illinois, and the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Trustee at Princeton University from 2008 to 2011. He also chairs the American Agora Foundation and serves as a director at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Siebel is the founder of the Montana Meth Project and the Siebel Scholars Foundation. His philanthropic contributions have been recognized by publications such as Barron's, which ranked him among the world's top 25 philanthropists in 2009 and 2010, and BusinessWeek, which included him in its list of The 50 Most Generous Philanthropists in 2007 and 2008.

## Philanthropy

In 2001, Siebel donated $32,000,000 to his alma mater, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to build the Siebel Center for Computer Science, opened in spring 2004. In 2006, Siebel donated $4,000,000 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to establish 2 endowed full professorships, the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science and the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science. Siebel pledged an additional $100,000,000 gift to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. In 2015, the Siebel Foundation launched the Siebel Energy Institute to research the data management of energy infrastructure monitoring data. In 2016, Siebel donated $25,000,000 to build the Siebel Center for Design at the University of Illinois, a 60,000-square-foot multidisciplinary hub designed by architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and was completed in 2020. In 2024, Siebel donated $50 million to the University of Illinois to establish the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science.

## Political involvement

In February 2022, Siebel donated $90,000 to the Canada convoy protest in Ottawa, that also blocked border crossings between Canada and the U.S. to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions.
In 2024, Siebel donated $500,000 to Donald Trump.

## Personal life

He is married to Stacey Siebel. They have 4 children and live in Woodside, California. Siebel is the second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the First Partner of California and wife of Governor Gavin Newsom.
In 2022, Siebel had the highest personal CO$_2$ emissions from private jet use of any American.

### Elephant incident

On the morning of August 1, 2009, he and a guide were in Tanzania, observing a group of elephants from 200 yards away, when an elephant charged Siebel's guide and then turned on Siebel, breaking several ribs, goring him in the left leg, and crushing the right. They radioed for help and it was 3 hours before he received any medical treatment. He was flown to the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, where they cleaned his wounds and stabilized his leg. He was then flown back to the United States on a 20-hour flight with 10 hours of morphine and 15 hours of fluids. He had lost half of his fluids and was put in the intensive care unit. He was moved to Stanford Hospital where, over the next six months, they performed 11 surgeries, fixed his ribs and shoulder, and saved his left leg.
In September 2010, Siebel had undergone 16 surgeries and an Ilizarov apparatus external fixator to mend, lengthen, and reshape the tibia of his right leg. After 19 reconstructive surgeries over 2 and a half years, Siebel made a full recovery. In 2013, National Geographic included Siebel's account in its TV series Dead or Alive: Trampled on Safari.

## Books and articles

* Digital Transformation (2019) ISBN 1948122480
* "Digital Transformation: The Post-Industrial Utility" (Aspenia Magazine, June 2018)
* "Why digital transformation is now on the CEO’s shoulders" (McKinsey Quarterly, December 2017)
* "The Internet of Energy" (Electric Perspectives, March/April 2015)
* "Big Data and the Smart Grid: Is Hadoop the Answer?" (Stanford Energy Journal, October 21, 2014)
* Taking Care of eBusiness (2001) ISBN 0-385-50227-3
* Cyber Rules (with Pat House) (1999) ISBN 0385494122
* Virtual Selling (with Michael Malone) (1996) ISBN 0684822873