$100 million gift to university from philanthropist Jeffrey Yass
Jeffrey Yass, raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Queens, New York, developed a fascination with numbers and strategy early on, inspired by his accountant parents.
He graduated from SUNY Binghamton with a degree in mathematics and economics, then sharpened his skills at poker tables and horse-race handicapping before entering the world of trading.
Yass’s professional breakthrough came in 1987 when he co-founded Susquehanna International Group (SIG) in Philadelphia, building it into a quiet powerhouse in market-making and options trading.
A pivotal moment arrived when SIG backed ByteDance in 2012, years before TikTok became globally ubiquitous; that investment, now valued in the tens of billions, remains central to Yass’s personal wealth and influence.
With his fortune, Yass has pursued an ambitious philanthropic strategy focused on education innovation. Alongside his wife Janine, he established the Yass Prize, funding non-traditional educational models—from charter schools specializing in autism to immersive career programs. Their prize has distributed tens of millions of dollars to innovative education providers, building a network that shares best practices and scales outside conventional systems.
This commitment culminated recently with Yass’s landmark $100 million gift to the University of Austin (UATX), marking his largest donation yet.
The university, founded in 2021, aims to remain tuition-free and independent of government funding, linking its long-term sustainability directly to the success of its graduates.
Half of Yass’s $100 million gift has been delivered, with the remaining half to be distributed over four years, launching a $300 million campaign.
Yass describes the approach as a “virtuous cycle,” designed to empower students to succeed in the marketplace and, in turn, support future generations.
Yass’s approach to philanthropy mirrors his professional worldview: leverage incentives, demand accountability, and value impact over activity.
A registered Libertarian and significant force in Republican political giving, his support for “school choice” has drawn both admiration for its coherence and criticism for its scale and influence.
His fortune is in the high tens of billions, is underpinned by Susquehanna’s ByteDance stake, which leaves him exposed to global policy shifts and TikTok’s evolving regulatory battles.
Yet Yass continues converting his venture wins into education experiments, testing whether debt-free, donor-funded schools can reshape American higher education. As UATX scales up, and the Yass Prize seeds new providers, Yass remains at the center of debates over the future of education funding and control in the United States.