British-American venture capitalist, born in Cardiff in 1954 to parents who had fled Nazi Germany. He ran Sequoia Capital, the venture-capital firm that helped fund Silicon Valley titans including Google and YouTube. He has lived in California since 1976.
In 2006 Sir Michael was diagnosed with blood cancer, caused by a gene more common among Ashkenazi Jewish men than in the general population. A doctor told him he would not live to see 70; he has. His memoir "Ausländer" (Outsider), published in 2026, traces his parents' escape from Germany and their displacement in Britain. His father Alfred won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, and became a professor and academic dean; along with 27,000 other Italian and German men over 16, he had been interned as an "Enemy Alien" on the Isle of Man during the second world war.
No good deed goes unpunished.