Google co-founder Sergey Brin seeks divorce from second wife Nicole Shanahan after 3 years of marriage
- The world’s sixth-richest person filed a petition for dissolution of his marriage to Shanahan, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’
- His split comes a year after Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates ended their marriage and about three years after Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott divorced
Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder and world’s sixth-richest person, filed for a divorce from his wife of three years, making him the third mega-billionaire to do so in as many years.
Brin filed a petition for dissolution of his marriage to Nicole Shanahan this month, citing “irreconcilable differences,” according to court documents. The couple, who have a three-year-old son, took steps to keep the details of the split private, requesting that documents be sealed by the court.
“Because of the high profile nature of their relationship, there is likely to be significance public interest in their dissolution case and any potential child custody issues,” according to the filing in Santa Clara, California.
Brin, 48, has a fortune of US$94 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, derived largely from his holdings in Google, the company he co-founded with Larry Page in 1998 that later formed the holding company Alphabet Inc. Both he and Page left Alphabet in 2019, although they remain on the board and still are the controlling shareholders.
Brin’s earlier marriage to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki ended in divorce in 2015.
It’s likely Brin and Shanahan have a prenuptial agreement since the relationship began long after he became a billionaire, said Monica Mazzei, a partner at Sideman & Bancroft LLP in San Francisco. But because the case is being handled by a private judge, “we will never know the details” of the divorce, she said.