American electrical engineer and businessman Andreas von Bechtolsheim has an estimated net worth of $6 billion as of April 2016, according to Bloomberg. He was the chief hardware designer of Sun Microsystems which he co-founded in 1982.

Andy Bechtolsheim was born on September 30, 1955  in Bavaria, Germany. He is a graduate of engineering from the University of Technology Munich. Eventually, he attended Carnegie Mellon University where he completed his master's degree in computer engineering. He then took his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

After founding Sun Microsystems, he launched Granite Systems in 1995. The company specialized on developing high-speed network switches. A year later, Granite System was acquired by Cisco Systems for only $220 million. That time, Bechtolsheim owns 60% of the company. Upon sale, he was hired as the general manager and vice president of Gigabit Systems Business Unit of Cisco. He left the company in 2003 and launched Kealia, Inc.

Together with Ray Sardina and Bill Joy, he co-founded HighBAR Ventures which is a venture capital investment firm. Among the company's investments include Regroup, Brightmail,  Tasmania Network Systems, Brocade and Mirapoint.