He Bought a Nearly Bankrupt Company From Warren Buffett for $1,000 and Turned It Into a $98 Billion Giant
Key Takeaways
Cheap entry, sustained commitment: Sprecher paid $1,000 plus the debt for a platform that MidAmerican Energy had already funded with $35 million and still couldn’t make work.A new market from scratch: He launched Intercontinental Exchange in 2000 with about nine staff, betting that electricity could be traded on an exchange.Acquisitions drove the scale: ICE went public in 2005, bought NYSE Euronext in 2013, and reached a reported $98 billion market cap by January 2026.
In 1997, Jeffrey Sprecher picked up a near-bankrupt trading platform called Continental Power Exchange from Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy for $1,000, plus the debt that came with it. Buffett’s utility had already pumped $35 million into the business, and it was still struggling. Sprecher kept at it anyway, later launching Intercontinental Exchange in 2000 from Atlanta with a nine-person team while living in a 500-square-foot studio, driving a used car, and even taking out the trash himself. By January 2026, Fortune pegged ICE at a $98 billion market cap, and the company had owned the New York Stock Exchange for more than a decade.
A $1,000 starting line
Every so often, a very American tech-business story starts with a purchase price that sounds like a typo. In 1997, Jeffrey Sprecher took over a near-bankrupt energy trading platform and kept pulling on the thread until it connected to the center of US finance. Fortune later told the tale as a straight line from a scrappy bet to a company worth $98 billion.
The asset was Continental Power Exchange, sold by Warren Buffett’s utility, MidAmerican Energy. Sprecher said “I bought the company for a dollar a share, and there were a thousand shares,” describing the $1,000 purchase, plus the assumption of outstanding debt. MidAmerican had already put $35 million into the business, and it still struggled.
Turning electricity into a digital market
Sprecher’s core hunch was simple: “I had this idea that you should be able to trade electric power, buy and sell electric power, on an exchange.” He also admitted he “had no idea how to do that,” and he had never worked on Wall Street or traded before, per Fortune’s January 2026 account.
In 2000, he founded Intercontinental Exchange, based in Atlanta, with a team of 9 employees building the software and market structure. While scaling, he lived in a 500-square-foot studio apartment, drove a used car, and handled unglamorous chores like buying staplers and taking out the trash himself.
From IPO to owning the New York Stock Exchange
ICE went public in 2005 on the New York Stock Exchange, a milestone for a company born from an unproven online trading idea. The bigger turning point arrived years later, when ICE pushed beyond commodities and into the plumbing of equities.
On November 13, 2013, ICE completed its acquisition of NYSE Euronext, per an SEC 8-K filing. The company described the combined business as “the leading global network of exchanges and clearing houses,” and it has owned the NYSE for over a decade.
A $98 billion empire built by buying, not bragging
In a January 29, 2026 interview, Sprecher said he has led around 50 acquisitions and called Apple co-founder Steve Jobs a mentor, saying it is “much easier to buy somebody else’s hard work and the sacrifice that many others made.” That philosophy, captured in that Fortune interview, reads less like Silicon Valley mythology and more like corporate development discipline.
By 2025, ICE reported $9.931 billion in revenue, $4.929 billion in operating income, $3.315 billion in net income, and 12,844 employees. Its leadership bench includes Sprecher as chair and CEO, Benjamin Jackson as president, Warren Gardiner as CFO, and Lynn Martin as president of NYSE Group. Is there a cleaner reminder that software, markets, and M&A can compound for decades?
