Thomas M. Siebel (/ˈsiːbəl/; born November 20, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman, technologist, and author. He was the founder of enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software platform and applications company.[1]
Between 1984 and 1990, Siebel was an executive at Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of management positions.[8][9] Siebel served as chief executive officer of Gain Technology, a multimedia software company that merged with Sybase in December 1992.[9] Siebel was the founder, chairman, and chief executive officerofSiebel Systems,[10] which was acquired by Oracle in January, 2006.[11] Siebel is the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversifiedholding company.[2]
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, Siebel proposed the idea of creating enterprise software applications tailored for marketing, sales, and customer service functions. Oracle management declined his proposal. In 1993, Siebel left Oracle and found Siebel Systems to pursue that opportunity.[12] In 1999, Siebel Systems became the fastest-growing technology company in the United States.[13] Siebel Systems grew to over 8,000 employees in 32 countries, more than 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue greater than $2 billion before merging with Oracle in January 2006.[14]
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.[15]
In 2001, Siebel donated $32 million 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.[26] In 2006, Siebel donated $4 million to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to establish two endowed full professorships, the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science and the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science.[27] Siebel pledged an additional $100 million gift to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007.[28] In 2015, the Siebel Foundation launched the Siebel Energy Institute to research the data management of energy infrastructure monitoring data.[29] In 2016, Siebel donated $25 million 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.[30]
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.[37][38] They radioed for help, but it was three hours before he received any medical treatment.[37] 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 only 10 hours of morphine and 15 hours of fluids. He had lost half of his fluids and was put in the intensive care unit.[39] 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.[38]
In September 2010, a year after the attack, Siebel had undergone 16 surgeries and an Ilizarov apparatus external fixator to mend, lengthen, and reshape the tibia of his right leg.[39] After 19 reconstructive surgeries over two and a half years, Siebel has now made a full recovery.[40] In 2013, National Geographic included Siebel's account in its TV series Dead or Alive: Trampled on Safari.[41]
