Billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman Found Three Strangers to Go to Space With Him

Billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman, who previously set the world record for the fastest flight around the world in a light jet, is getting ready for another historic flight. But this time, he’s going into space, and he’s taking three strangers along for the ride.

Isaacman recently chartered a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for an undisclosed sum, and he recruited three “everyday” people to join him for Inspiration 4, the first all-civilian mission into orbit, per CBS News.

His fellow voyagers are physician’s assistant Hayley Arceneaux, community college science teacher Sian Proctor, and engineer Chris Sembroski. The Inspiration 4 flight will raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where Arceneaux works and where she was once treated for bone cancer.

In preparation of Inspiration 4’s launch this fall, read on for more information about Isaacman.

Isaacman is the founder and CEO of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments—formerly known as United Bank Card and Harbortouch—a company he launched in 1999 from his family’s basement, according to his online bio. He was 16 years old at the time.

In 2011, Isaacman founded Draken International, a defense firm with the world’s largest private fleet of military aircraft. He sold a majority stake in Draken to the investment management company Blackstone in 2019, netting a nine-figure payday for the sale, according to Forbes.

Isaacman is also an accomplished pilot, having set the world record for an around-the-world flight in a light jet when he flew nearly 23,000 miles in just under 62 hours in 2009, according to Fast Company.

Isaacman’s net worth as of Tuesday, May 4, was $2.8 billion, according to Forbes. That’s twice as much as he was worth in October 2020, when the magazine reported his net worth as $1.4 billion, citing his 38-percent stake in Shift4 and his small stake in Draken.

The entrepreneur took Shift4 public in June 2020, and the stock (NYSE: FOUR) has nearly tripled in price since then.

Jared is married to Monica Isaacman, with whom he went to middle school. At the time of his 2015 Fast Company profile, they had been a couple for 13 years and married for three of those years. Monica was one of the first employees at his company, according to the profile, and they started dating shortly after she started working there. “Monica gets it,” Jared told the magazine. “She knows exactly what I do in life: I work.”

In February, Jared told the Associated Press that Monica had helped keep his space trip a secret. But their daughters—7 and 4 years old at the time—nearly blew their cover after they overheard conversations about Inspiration 4. The girls blabbed to their teachers, who then called Monica to ask if it was true that Jared was an astronaut.

“My wife said, ‘No, of course not, you know how these kids make things up,’” Jared shared. “But I mean the reality is my kids weren’t that far off with that one.”