Xavier Niel

Early life

Xavier Niel was born into a middle-class family; his father is a lawyer for a pharmaceutical laboratory, and his mother is an accountant. He studied in the 12th arrondissement of Paris at the Saint-Michel-de-Picpus Catholic private high school.

Niel started early by developing telecommunication and data services and embarked at a young age on an entrepreneurial career soon after his father gave him a Sinclair ZX81 computer as a Christmas present when he was 15.

In 1987 at 19, while dropping out from school, he successfully created then sold his first company, a Minitel (a French forerunner of the internet) service company. This minitel-site provided sex oriented chat services. To do so, Niel bought press licenses in order to be able to become a service editor, diverting it in order to set up its commercial services. Through this, he became a millionaire in euros at the age of 24.

In his late teens, he was confronted by police for hacking Canal+ decoders. He has stated that, to avoid being arrested, he briefly did espionage for Direction de la surveillance du territoire, which allegedly included accessing the phone data of then-president François Mitterrand.

Career

Telecommunications

Telecommunications with Iliad

In 1995, he invested in the first Internet service provider in France, World-NET. The company was sold for 30 million euros the year before the internet bubble burst in 2000.

In 1999, he created Free, a French Internet service provider. In 2002, Free launched a broadband package at a low price (€29.99 per month), which became a benchmark in the French market. At the same time, Free developed and launched the Freebox: the first triple-play offer in France.

In 2012, he created Free Mobile, which offered unlimited voice calls, text and data at the lowest price of the market in France (€19.99 per month).

The entrepreneur launched the Iliad Italia brand in Italy in 2018 with a €5.99 unlimited offer.

In September 2020, through Iliad, he launched a public offer for the Polish operator Play, leader of the Polish mobile market with 15 million subscribers after having bought a 96% stake on the market for €2.2 billion.

;Telecommunications with NJJ Holding

In 2014, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) sold its 55% economic interest in Monaco Telecom to NJJ Capital, an investment vehicle controlled by Niel for US$445 million. Through Monaco Telecom he later acquired MTN Cyprus which was rebranded into Epic in June 2019 and Vodafone Malta rebranded into Epic in 2020.

On 18 December 2014, via its holding company NJJ Capital, he acquired for US$2.7 billion (2.8 billion Swiss francs) Orange Switzerland (owned by Apax Partners since 2012), which was renamed Salt Mobile in April 2015. In May 2019 Salt Mobile sold 90% of its towers for $800 million to Cellnex

In April 2018, he acquired 65% of Eir, the Irish former state-owned telecom monopoly.

Through NJJ, Niel became the largest shareholder of fixed line and mobile telecommunications services provider operator in Latin America, Millicom, in 2023. He made two unsuccessful attempts at buying out the company in 2024.

In April 2024, NJJ Holding has been given regulatory approval to acquire Ukrainian fixed telecom and pay-TV provider Datagroup-Volia and mobile provider Lifecell in a $500 million transaction.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield

Since 2020, Niel has been acquiring shares in the real estate company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, as of 2024 he was owning 25% of the shares of the company. Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has an international presence in Europe (France, Spain, UK, Germany) and in the United States in California (Westfield Topanga, Westfield Century City).

Press

In late 2010, along with Pierre Bergé and Matthieu Pigasse, Niel acquired a controlling stake in Groupe Le Monde which edits the daily newspaper Le Monde but also magazines such as l’Obs, Courrier International and Télérama.{{cite web | access-date=13 January 2011}} In February 2020, Niel acquired through his personal holding 100% of Groupe Nice-Matin, which edits the newspapers Nice-Matin, Var-Matin and Monaco-Matin. The group also own an 11% stake in La Provence. In March 2020, he acquired France-Antilles, a daily newspaper in the French West Indies. In June 2020, Niel acquired Paris-Turf which is France's first horseracing newspaper.

Other investments

In March 2010, Niel cofounded with Jeremie Berrebi Kima Ventures, a fund dedicated to invest in 50 to 100 startups a year everywhere in the world. Kima Ventures already invested in 330 companies from February 2010 to August 2014 in 32 countries. Business Insider described Niel and Jeremie Berrebi as almost certainly the most active angel investors in the world. Since 2015, Jean de La Rochebrochard is the Managing Partner of the fund.

In 2013, Niel created a school named 42, which is a free technical school with no teachers, no books, no tuition for 1000 people every year. As of 2021, 33 campuses have been opened in the world.

In June 2017, Niel welcomed the French President Emmanuel Macron for the inauguration of Station F, a business incubator for startups located in Paris, known as the largest in the world.

In April 2021, he became the first shareholder of the company Unieuro, which is the largest Italian retailer of consumer electronics and household appliances by number of outlets, with a network of 460 stores throughout Italy.

In April 2023, Niel was part of an investor group that announced that it had bought a 7.5 per cent stake in Swiss asset manager GAM.

In October 2023, Niel together with Rodolphe Saadé, Eric Schmidt, and other investors announced a €200 million investment in artificial intelligence which includes "the purchase of a supercomputer and the creation of a dedicated research laboratory," later named Kyutai. Prior to that, he was a seed investor in Mistral AI.

Other activities

Neil was a member of the French advisory body Conseil national du numérique in 201112.

In 2015, Niel cofounded Mediawan, an international production and distribution group, together with Matthieu Pigasse and Pierre-Antoine Capton.

In 2016, Neil founded Art 42, a street-art gallery self-described as an "anti-museum" inside the Paris campus of 42.

Niel joined the board of US investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in March 2018 and the board of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, in September 2024.

His book "Une Sacrée Envie de Foutre le Bordel" ("An Urge to Make a Mess"), co-written by former Paris deputy mayor was published in 2024 by Groupe Flammarion.

Legal problems

In May 2004, Niel was indicted and detained for a month at the La Santé Prison for alleged procuring and misuse of company assets, which occurred in several sex shops in which he was a shareholder. In August 2005, a nolle prosequi was pronounced for the procuring part of his indictment, while in October 2006, he was given a two years suspended prison sentence for the misuse of company assets.{{cite web | access-date=13 January 2011}}

Property status

In 2016, according to Forbes magazine, he ranked as the 129th wealthiest individual globally, with a net worth of $9.7 billion USD (approximately nine billion euros). He was also listed as the ninth-wealthiest person in France in 2014 by Challenges and seventh by Forbes in 2016.

In 2019, Forbes ranked him 18th among France's wealthiest individuals, with €3.6 billion, marking a drop of ten positions from the previous ranking. The magazine noted that "the most significant decline was seen in Xavier Niel, the founder of Iliad-Free, who fell ten places after a disastrous year on the stock market".

According to Challenges in July 2020, Xavier Niel and his family reportedly held a fortune of €9 billion. His wealth surged significantly in 2020, with Forbes ranking him 253rd globally and among the wealthiest in France.

As of April 3, 2025, the American magazine Forbes estimates his fortune at $10.7 billion (235th globally).

Recognition

In August 2015, Wired named him as the seventh most influential personality in technology in the world. In February 2017, Vanity Fair named him the most influential French person in the world abroad.

Niel received the title of Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2022.

Personal life

Niel's domestic partner is French businesswoman Delphine Arnault, who is a director and executive vice president at Louis Vuitton, and the chairwoman and chief executive officer of Dior. She is the daughter of Bernard Arnault. Niel has a son (Joseph, born in 2016) and a daughter (Élisa, born in 2012) with her and two sons (Jules and John, born in 2000 and 2002) from a previous relationship, and lives in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

Since 2013, he has also owned a five star hotel in French ski resort Courchevel. In 2016, he acquired the Hôtel Lambert an hôtel particulier from 1640 on the Île Saint-Louis, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris for more than $226 million, to be reportedly used as the headquarters for Niel’s cultural foundation.

References

References

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70. Sarah Cascone, 'Billionaire Art Collector Xavier Niel Bought a $226 Million Paris Hotel Rumored to Be the Future Home of His Cultural Foundation', ArtNet, 24 February 2022 [https://news.artnet.com/art-world/xavier-niel-snaps-french-mansion-foundation-2077314]