What Is Jared Isaacman's Net Worth? A Look at the Polaris Dawn Commander's Successful Career

Amid the successful launch of SpaceX's private space mission Polaris Dawn, folks have become curious to learn more about the four-person crew onboard.

Amid reports that the crew's mission commander, Jared Isaacman, is a billionaire, many were interested in learning more about Jared's backstory and how he got where he is today.

On that note: What is Jared's net worth, and how did he get there?

First, let's rewind a bit to see how Jared got to where he is today.

Jared was born on Feb. 11, 1983, in Union, N.J. As a teenager, he noticed that he was quite good at fixing computers. So he and a friend of his started a business around this, calling it Deco Systems.

Jared took a summer job at CompUSA (remember them?!), where he'd recommend his own business to the store's clients. "I grew up in a very middle-class background," he told Fast Company in 2015. "It was a place where if you wanted something, you worked to get it."

After Deco Systems took on a payment company called Merchant Services International (MSI) as a client, Jared was soon recruited over to MSI. Jared, who was still in school, took his GED and accepted the full-time position. While working in the company's IT department, he became fascinated by the inefficiencies he noticed in the payment world.

"For a pizza joint to open up a credit card account, there was as much paperwork as signing up for a mortgage,” he recalled to Fast Company. "The sheer amount of inefficiency in the industry was ridiculous. There was no innovation, no streamlining, nothing was being directed towards improving the merchants’ experience."

And so Jared decided to launch his own payment business. Working out of his parents' basement, he and his friend (the same friend with whom he'd started Deco Systems) eventually launched United Bank Card (later called Harbortouch and then Shift4 Payments) in 1999.

In 2004, amid a feeling of career burnout, he began taking flying lessons at a local airport. Fast-forward to 2009, and Jared set a world speed record for an around-the-globe flight.

"It was always a passion of mine growing up, but I ultimately turned to flying as an escape, as therapy," he told Fast Company. "When you’re flying a fighter jet, you are physically detached from the world. There is only so much room in your head to worry about the problems of everyday life."

In 2012, Jared co-founded a company called Draken International, in which pilots train members of different branches of the U.S. military.

And in 2021, Jared commanded the first private civilian flight to space, as part of SpaceX's Polaris program, in a mission that raised money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He and the three other members of his crew spent three days orbiting around the planet.

In 2024, Jared geared up to return to space again, this time for the Polaris Dawn mission, with plans for Jared and his crew to not only go up higher than anyone else has been (and into a radiation belt!), but also to open their hatch and go out into space (a first-time feat for civilians). The mission launched on Sept. 10.

With this kind of incredible career comes a similarly incredible net worth — at least according to reports. Per Forbes, Jared is worth a whopping $1.8 billion.