What Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Jassy, Sam Altman, and other tech execs have said about parenting

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What Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Jassy, Sam Altman, and other tech execs have said about parenting

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 Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC, David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images Tech execs akin Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Andy Jassy (right) have spoken concerning their method to parenting.

Updated 2026-11-08T11:30:01.321Z

Tech executives are assisting build the products, platforms, and companies that volition form existence for forthcoming generations.

So how do the group creating tomorrow's technologies think concerning raising children for the earth those technologies are assisting create?

We looked through former interviews to discover several of the tech leaders' most engaging pointers on parenting and environment kids up for achievement in today's world.

Turns out, equal the uber-wealthy leaders have to contend alongside mundane parenting questions, akin whether to bounds screen time and how to divvy up chores.

Here's what several of the biggest names in tech have stated concerning their method to raising children.

Sam Altman

Sam Altman

Sam Altman Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The OpenAI CEO told Jimmy Fallon that ChatGPT has helped him lift his baby. Altman stated he "cannot imagine" having figured out how to genitor a newborn without the technology. He's asked, for example, why his kid wasn't crawling at a certain age.

Altman has additionally stated that his baby "will never be smarter than AI," but volition be "more capable." He told the Senate that he doesn't desire his kid to form a best-friend-like bond alongside an AI bot.

And whenever it comes to cribs, Altman has stated he has a apparent favorite: Cradlewise. It expenses nearly $2,000 and gently bounces the baby to caput off any fussing. The crib additionally includes a built-in baby detect and music features.

Altman additionally stated he's learned the importance of having a lot of burp rags.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg smiling.

Mark Zuckerberg advises his kids to go profound on a subject. Chris Unger/Getty Images

When asked in 2024 what kids have to be studying today, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that "the most crucial item is learning how to think critically and learning values whenever you're young."

"This is slightly of a hiring doctrine that I have, too," he said. "If group have shown that they can go profound and do one item really well, afterward they've likely gained cognition in the art of learning item and taking it to an outstanding level."

He additionally stated in a 2024 discussion that, whenever taking his then-seven-year-old female to a Taylor Swift concert, he told her that being akin the superstar wasn't "available" to her. A therapist in California who has worked alongside affluent parents told Business Insider that encouraging her to alternatively be herself was the correct approach.

In a 2019 interview on CBS This Morning, the Meta CEO stated he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, "don't provision them everything."

"They have chores, they have responsibilities," Chan added. "We additionally obtain them to work. Mark and I obtain the two of them to the agency to see what we do, how we contribute."

That identical year, he told Fox News that he mostly doesn't desire his kids parked in forefront of a tv or device "for a lengthy duration of time." At the time, he stated he let his daughters use video calls to conversation alongside relatives throughout the nation but is stricter concerning another forms of display time.

Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki on the red carpet of the Vanity Fair Oscar party, wearing a red dress.

Anne Wojcicki, cofounder of 23andMe. Cindy Ord/VF24/Getty Images

Wojcicki, the cofounder and erstwhile CEO of 23andMe, stated she tries to keep her children restricted and protected from the "insanity" of being wealthy.

In a 2017 discussion with The New York Times, Wojcicki stated that during she had expert assistance cleaning the home a few times a week, she had told them to halt doing the laundry on Fridays so that her children could study the chore.

"It's so uncomplicated to be like, 'I don't have to do laundry again. I don't have to chef again.' But afterward you're not normal," she told the Times. "I have a new regulation lately. I fair don't go out on weekdays. If I'm raising kids, I need to be focused on assisting execute that normalcy."

Wojcicki additionally talked at the period concerning cutting her children's tress herself.

Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella Microsoft

Nadella says his parents encouraged him to prosecute his interests. Microsoft

Nadella says his own parents "created an surroundings anywhere they let me set my own gait and prosecute what I wanted," and that influenced his method to raising his own children.

"It's crucial to concentration on what [our kids] need to thrive," he earlier told Good Housekeeping.

The Microsoft CEO and his wife, Anu, additionally "both think children should have dogs," she told Good Housekeeping.

"There is a distinct awareness of companionship and duty that comes alongside it — that affectional awareness that there is a being waiting for you to arrive back," Anu said.

Nadella told Good Housekeeping that he gets reports on what their kids do on their computers. The brace limits how many movies and what kinds of video games and websites their kids can view.

Nadella has additionally stated that his cognition raising a son alongside cerebral palsy has taught him the importance of empathy, including at work.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai speaking.

Pichai has two kids. Justin Sullivan/Getty

Pichai motionless helps his kids alongside their homework — alongside several aid from Google Lens.

"We use Google Lens for homework. I don't desire to get him in trouble, but the category allows you to do that," Pichai earlier told Bloomberg. "But sometimes he asks me for assistance on math. Sometimes I'm lazy and I feign as if I'm thinking, but I'm additionally using Google Lens to benevolent of fig out the answer."

The Google CEO told The New York Times in 2018 that his son, afterward 11 years old, didn't have a phone, and that he constricted his son's TV use.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates

Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images

The Microsoft cofounder has stated he raised his kids following a example developed in the 1970s called the "Love and Logic" approach.

The philosophy focuses on exercising authority whenever it comes to emotions, specified as by minimizing several reactions as a parent, akin shouting or reprimanding. Gates said his dad believed in the identical philosophy, and that "he was never panicked."

Gates, who for many years was the world's richest man, has additionally stated he tried to keep his kids from being spoiled.

"We desire to attack a balance anywhere they have the liberty to do anything, but not a lot of prosperity showered on them so they could go out and do nothing," he formerly said.

As far as display period limits go, Gates forbade his kids from using phones at the meal table, and didn't provision them phones until they were 14 years old.

In a 2025 event of the podcast "Raj Shamani's Figuring it Out," Gates stated he was giving his children small than 1% of his total wealth, "because I decided it wouldn't be a favor to them."

"I desire to provision them a chance to have their own earnings and achievement be significant," Gates added.

Melinda French Gates

Melinda French Gates talks into a dreary microphone.

Melinda French Gates, originator of Pivotal. Bloomberg/Getty Images

The billionaire donor has stated one of her directing ideas as a genitor was learning to be "good enough."

French Gates, who has three children alongside Bill Gates, wrote concerning "the notion of the fine adequate parent" in an excerpt from her 2025 autobiography published by Time.

She stated the idea became particularly meaningful whenever her children were 9, 6, and 2, and Warren Buffett's important contribution to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation required her to expend additional period distant from home.

French Gates wrote that she felt blameworthy concerning the period she was missing alongside her children, but the idea helped her let go of the anticipation that fine parenting required perfection.

"And to any another genitor who is study this, cognize that this is all bit as true for you," she wrote. "When it comes to taking attention of your family — several of the most crucial activity you'll do in this earth — I anticipation you'll refuse to let perfectionism rob family existence of precious joy."

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos lengthy portrait

Bezos shares four children alongside ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. Kevin Winter/Getty

At times, Bezos took an different method to raising his four kids. He said in 2017 that he let his kids use "sharp knives" from age 4 and power tools at 7 or 8.

The Amazon originator attributed this to his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who he stated would "much fairly have a kid alongside nine fingers than a resourceless kid." Bezos added that this was "a awesome outlook concerning life."

Alexis Ohanian

Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian at the Met Gala.

Ohanian cofounded Reddit and shares two children alongside tennis celebrity Serena Williams. Taylor Hill/Getty Images

The Reddit cofounder unified a fun custom from his upbringing into his method to parenting.

"My favorite parenting tip that I inherited from him was his Sunday tradition of making dawn meal for our family," he said in 2020. "I affection being capable to create pancakes alongside my family whenever we're all in the identical location on a Sunday, and continually do my finest to put distant exterior distractions so we can be together."

On a 2025 podcast episode, Ohanian stated he "wholeheartedly" wanted his then-seven-year-old female to use AI all day. He stated he's used the innovation to enhance her creativity: he had ChatGPT rotate several of his younker pencil sketches into "full-color illustrations." His daughter, Ohanian said, motionless draws alongside old-fashioned markers and document as well.

Ohanian told CNBC in 2018 that he and tennis celebrity Serena Williams want their female "to cognize what it's akin to have limits on tech."

"My spouse and I the two desire her to be bored," he said. "I do appearance onward to playing video games alongside her whenever she's older, but it's really crucial that she gets period to fair be alongside her thoughts and be alongside her blocks and be alongside her toys, so we'll be regulating it beautiful heavily."

Evan Spiegel

Evan Spiegel

Snap CEO Even Spiegel GONZALO FUENTES/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in 2018 that he and his wife, supermodel Miranda Kerr, constricted their then-seven-year-old's screen time to 1.5 hours a week. The rule, he said, was partially influenced by not being allowed to watch tv until he was nearly a teenager.

He stated that parents should guide by example and activity to bounds their own display period as well.

Spiegel told People in 2025 that he's glad his kids are expanding up alongside digital tools, and Kerr stated they don't let their 14-year-old have phones or computers in his area former 9:30 pm.

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel, a PayPal and Palantir cofounder. Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union

At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2024, Thiel stated his children — who were three and a fractional and five at the period — were allowed to use screens for lone concerning an hr and a fractional all week.

But Thiel additionally stated it was too simplistic to treat tech and social media companies as the origin of all contemporary problems.

"It's too uncomplicated to rotate tech or the social media companies into the scapegoats of all of our problems," he said.

Andy Jassy

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, on Tuesday, October 5, 2021.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Becoming a dad changed how Amazon CEO Andy Jassy would bring activity home.

"I realized that I had to alter the way I worked, or I was either going to have to depart Amazon or I was going to be a lousy dad," he stated in October 2026 during the company's "Bring Your Parents to Work Day."

Jassy highlighted three immovable parts of his weekly schedule: a Tuesday date night alongside his wife, a weekly dawn meal alongside all of his two kids, and meal alongside the complete family all night. If he had additional activity to do, it would arrive following the kids went to bed.

"I fair think several of those things, you fair have to decide they're a priority," he said.

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Alice Tecotzky is a newsman on the Tech desk, based in London. She writes concerning Big Tech companies and what it's akin to activity at them, following having earlier covered Wall Street. Have a tip? Email her at [email protected], attain her on Signal at alicetecotzky.05, or prosecute her on X @atecotzky.Alice graduated from Columbia University in May 2024 alongside a flat in English. Before she joined Business Insider, she covered breaking news at the Daily Beast and learning at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Ben Shimkus is a newsman for the Business News desk. He writes concerning cars, transportation, retail, and jobs. Ben's reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Verge, Automotive News, USA Today, AutoBody News, LGBTQ Nation, TopSpeed, and Out Magazine. He's additionally held personnel penning positions at The U.S. Sun and the Daily Mail. He graduated from NYU alongside a Master's in reporting in 2024. Email Ben at [email protected] or communication him privately on Signal at bshimkus.41. 

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