“Save, save, save. Put away a piece of every paycheck,” said Shaquille O’Neal once about saving and investing money. Learning the traits of business from NBA icon and billionaire Magic Johnson, Shaq added his touch and now stands at over $500 million in net worth. One might say a good chunk of it is possible thanks to his ‘accidental’ investment in Google.

Shaquille O’Neal’s estimated return on investment from Google

Back in 1999, a year after Google was founded, Shaquille O’Neal invested in its Series A. At the time, the Lakers legend placed a $100 million valuation on the table. While the precise timing of O’Neal’s investment remains unknown, if he had invested $250,000 and retained all his shares, they would have been valued at approximately $16.5 million on Google’s 20th IPO anniversary.

As of September 2025, Alphabet (Google) has a market cap of $3.055 trillion. This makes Alphabet (Google) the world’s 4th most valuable company by market cap, as per companies’ market cap data. Despite investing in the company, the 4x NBA champion still had some regrets. “My only regret is that I wish I would have bought more”. O’Neal told author Zack O’Malley Greenburg about his Google investment for the book “A-List Angels: How a Band of Actors, Artists, and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley.” Now the question will be who advised the Big Aristotle with this investment?

An unexpected meeting led to a sizeable investment

When you are a 3x Finals MVP, there are chances that the majority of people walking in any room would recognize you. Top it with the stature of the seven-footer, and it makes him a hard-to-miss personality. Yes, the investment proved to be the right place at the right time for O’Neal. He was eating his lunch in the Four Seasons hotel when Ron Conway (an early investor at Google and one of the most respected figures in Silicon Valley) and 3 other people entered the hotel.

Conway was with his grandchildren, who quickly recognized Shaquille O’Neal and went to play with him. The 15x All-Star added, “Basically, I’m doing a babysitting job and one gentleman says ‘I want to talk about this company called Google’ and just talking about search engines and ‘you’ll be able to type in anything,’ and I was like, ‘That sounds good.'” Even though Shaq didn’t quite understand the “search engines and stuff” back then, after having a word with his own people, Shaq was ready to pitch in $250k.

However, that’s not the end of the story. And the interesting part. He almost forgot about his investment in Google. He found out how much he made by reading the newspaper, a couple of years after his investment. “The newspaper told me how much I made and I couldn’t believe how much I made.” Putting together his investment return, Shaq realized he should have invested more in Google at the time.

Prior to investing, Shaquille O’Neal once listened to what Amazon creator Jeff Bezos had to say, which changed his thought process. It was during a conference in ‘97 or ‘98. “If you invest in things that’s going to change people’s lives, you’ll always get a great return on your investment.” That single quote became the blueprint for Shaq’s investing philosophy. That’s why at one time, O’Neal owned as many as 40 gyms, 150 car washes, 155 Five Guys Burger & Fries, 9 Papa John’s, 17 Auntie Anne’s pretzels, and a few Krispy Kreme restaurants.