Steve Jobs gave then U.S. Senator Barack Obama a sneak peek at the iPhone before its 2007 release, says David Axelrod in his upcoming book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, scheduled to be released on Feb. 10.
Axelrod, President Obama’s chief campaign advisor, writes:
In 2007, Obama got a sneak peek at the iPhone during a private meeting with Apple’s Steve Jobs. “If it were legal, I would buy a boatload of Apple stock. This thing is going to be really big,” Obama said after the meeting.
9to5Mac notes that Obama and Jobs had other meetings before Jobs’ untimely death, including the famous “Silicon Valley Summit” as pictured above.
If Obama had bought Apple stock at the time, which was selling for a split-adjusted $12-14 per share in 2007, he would have done quite well.
The Washington Post estimates that if Obama had invested $400,000 in Apple stock on April 27, 2007, at the buy price of $99.02, $13.40 at current valuation, that investment would now be worth $3.6 million.
Of course, he would have also received 10 dividend payments for the shares, amounting to around $40,000 since late 2012. Not a huge windfall, but would you turn it down?
