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The majority of Plattner's fortune is derived from his stake in SAP, the world's largest provider of enterprise application software, according to its website.

The billionaire holds 3% of the Walldorf, Germany-based company through Hasso Plattner Single Asset, according to its 2023 annual report. He has another 3.2% through Hasso Plattner Foundation, according to the report.

Plattner has collected more than $5 billion from share sales through 2023, according to company filings and an analysis of Bloomberg data. The value of his cash investments is based on these proceeds as well as dividends, charitable contributions, taxes and market performance.

Christiane Rosenbach, a spokesperson at the Hasso Plattner Institute, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.

Born in 1944, Plattner spent his earliest years in war-torn Berlin. The son of an eye surgeon, he was sent to boarding school in Bavaria at the age of 15, after the divorce of his mother and father. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Plattner studied engineering and after graduating from the Technical University of Karlsruhe took a job as a salesman with IBM in Mannheim.

He quit IBM in 1972 and along with four other IBM defectors co-founded SAP the same year. The group was motivated in part by their former employer's rejection of their suggestion to create financial software packages for businesses. Together, they built Walldorf, Germany-based SAP into the world's largest manufacturer of business management software.

The billionaire served as one of the company's two chief executives until 2003, when he stepped aside to become chief software adviser and chairman of the supervisory board.

Plattner is divorced, has two children and lives in Potsdam, Germany.