Background and career
Hasso Plattner (born 21 January 1944) is a German businessman who is the co-founder of SAP SE software company. From 2003 to 2024, he was the chairman of the company's supervisory board. As of August 2020, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$17.9 billion.
Plattner was born to German ophthalmologist Horst Plattner (1918–2001) and his wife shortly before the end of the Second World War, in Berlin. He grew up in Bavaria and completed his masters degree in communications engineering from the University of Karlsruhe in 1968.
In 1972, Plattner and four colleagues left IBM to launch SAP, where he eventually was co-chief executive (together with Henning Kagermann) from 1998. He stepped down in 2003 at age 60. From 2003 to 2024, Plattner chaired the company's supervisory board and played an influential role in the company's governance, orchestrating the hiring of co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein in 2019. He has reduced his stake in SAP several times; as of 2020, he owned a 5.89% stake, making him the company's largest individual shareholder. In 1998, Plattner founded the non-profit Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI). He is Chair of Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts and Professor of Enterprise Systems at HPI. In 2005, Plattner set up his own venture capital fund, Hasso Plattner Ventures, with more than 25 million euros. By December 2009, HPV managed €150 million and had 17 companies in its portfolio, including online cruise portals Dreamlines. An affiliate fund, HPV Africa in Cape Town, was founded in 2008, with €29 million, and soon invested in five companies. Plattner provides the lion's share of this investment capital. In September 2010, HPV invested $6 million in Israeli software company Panaya in exchange for the company's stakes.
In 2005, Plattner's maxZ86 maxi yacht set a record at the Transpacific Yacht Race and was the scratch boat when it led a five-boat assault on the record for monohulls. She finished the race in 6 days, 16 hours, 4 minutes, and 11 seconds to win "the Barn Door" trophy, a slab of carved koa wood traditionally awarded to the monohull with the fastest elapsed time. In 2013, he won the German Dragon Championship as part of a three-man crew that included Hamish Pepper. Plattner is a keen golfer. In 1994, he acquired the Fancourt Hotel and Country Club, which has three Gary Player-designed championship courses, in addition to the CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, California. The Links of Fancourt staged the 2003 Presidents Cup matches between the US and an international team, captained by Gary Player. Plattner is also an investor in San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises, which owns the San Jose Sharks, and other related properties as well as managing the city owned SAP Center at San Jose. In 2013, he bought out two of the partners in SJS&E, and began as the Sharks' representative on the National Hockey League's board of governors. However, general manager Mike Grier and his staff run the hockey operations.
Plattner signed The Giving Pledge in February 2013. In 2015, he set up the Hasso Plattner Foundation and the charity's activities span education, art and culture, and conservation. Since 2017, the foundation has been headquartered at Villa Wunderkind in Potsdam, the former home of German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop.
Plattner has had strong connections with South Africa over the years and spends some of his time living there, while participating in charitable work. In the fight against AIDS, he supports the universities of KwaZulu Natal and Cape Town. Plattner's donation of €6 million for the Isombululo programme for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS was announced at the Presidents Cup, one of the world's leading international golf tournaments in 2003 and it is suggested that this amount will have helped 360,000 people. In the spring of 2005, Plattner personally covered the costs of the 46664 benefit concert, which took place at his Gary Player-designed golf course, The Links of Fancourt in George which is near Cape Town and which was broadcast globally on television. Proceeds went towards the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an organisation co-founded by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
