Originally published July 2021. Updated September 2026 · EPR Builders profile · The canonical Everything-PR profile of David A. Steinberg · Filed under AdTech & MarTech
David A. Steinberg: Zeta Global CEO, Seven-Time Founder, Two-Time Unicorn Builder
David A. Steinberg has built two billion-dollar companies, taken both public, and engineered one of the most consequential operator comebacks in modern American business. He went from a Bethesda basement, to the second-biggest tech IPO of 2004 behind only Google, through Chapter 11, to founding Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) with John Sculley and listing it on the New York Stock Exchange.
David A. Steinberg is the Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA), the AI-powered marketing cloud serving the world's largest brands. He co-founded what would become Zeta in 2007 with John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple and former president of Pepsi-Cola, and took the company public on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2021 at a $1.7 billion valuation. As of Q2 2026, Zeta had reported 20 consecutive quarters of beating and raising its own guidance, with quarterly revenue of $443 million, up 44 percent year over year.
He is a seven-time founder. Two unicorns. Both taken public. Prior exits collectively totaling close to $2 billion before Zeta even existed. Public estimates of his personal net worth place him in the billion-dollar range.
Steinberg's Early Career: Sterling Cellular & the Bethesda Basement
The David A. Steinberg origin story does not begin in a Stanford dorm or a Sand Hill Road meeting. It begins in 1993, in the basement of his parents' house in Bethesda, Maryland, with credit cards and a loan from his parents.
The company was Sterling Cellular, a B2B and retail wireless reseller. By 1997, four years in, Sterling was running 12 retail locations and doing $22 million in annual sales. Steinberg was 27.
That was the foundation. Operating discipline before capital. Distribution before code. A working understanding of how Americans actually buy wireless products and services. That understanding became the wedge for what came next.
InPhonic: David A. Steinberg's First Public Company & 23,000% Growth
David A. Steinberg's next company was InPhonic. The bet: move wireless activation and distribution onto the open web. Build the Expedia of mobile phones. Bring Sculley in as chairman.
The numbers from InPhonic's run are still difficult to fully process. Annual revenue went from $499,000 in 2000 to $136 million in 2003, a three-year growth rate of more than 23,000 percent. That growth made InPhonic the No. 1 company on the 2004 Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.
In November 2004, InPhonic went public. It was the second-biggest technology IPO of the year, behind only Google. The offering raised more than $100 million. The market cap climbed as high as $950 million. Steinberg, the year before, had been named the Ernst & Young Greater Washington Entrepreneur of the Year.
From 2004 through 2007, InPhonic was consistently ranked one of the top 10 internet marketers in the United States. Its signature site, Wirefly.com, became the dominant cell phone comparison-shopping destination on the web. Steinberg ran the acquisition playbook hard: A1 Wireless for $20.9 million, Simplexity for $20 million, Avesair for $7 million, and several others, building scale through consolidation.
The InPhonic Collapse & David A. Steinberg's 30-Day Reset
Then 2007. The wireless rebate model that had powered InPhonic's growth ran into customer-service execution problems, regulatory pressure, and a tightening credit environment. The business that had grown at 23,000 percent began to wobble. By the end of 2007, the company Steinberg had built was filing for Chapter 11. Assets were sold to Versa Capital Management and relaunched as Simplexity.
David A. Steinberg resigned as CEO in November 2007. Inside of 30 days, he had moved the furniture out of his old Georgetown office and into a new office in the building next door. The new company was XL Marketing, co-founded with John Sculley. It would become Zeta Interactive, then Zeta Global. See the full account of that partnership in The Sculley Partnership.
Most founders who lose a public company at the scale Steinberg lost InPhonic do not start the next billion-dollar business 30 feet away the same month. That detail is the entire personality.
Zeta Global: David A. Steinberg's Second Unicorn & Second IPO
The thesis at founding: marketing was about to be reorganized around proprietary data and identity, and the incumbents were structurally unequipped for the shift. Sculley brought four decades of consumer-marketing operating discipline at the highest levels of corporate America: Apple, Pepsi. Steinberg brought the second-time-founder lessons from InPhonic and a working operating thesis on where the category was going.
XL Marketing rebranded to Zeta Interactive in 2014. To Zeta Global in 2016. Along the way, the company acquired the customer relationship management division of eBay's Enterprise operation in a deal sources valued at $80 to $90 million, and bought the marketing automation tool Acxiom Impact for more than $50 million.
In 2015, Blackstone's GSO Capital Partners put in $125 million to fund the acquisition strategy. In 2017, GPI Capital and Franklin Square Capital Partners led a $140 million raise that put the company's valuation at roughly $1.3 billion. Forbes listed it among America's 50 Most Promising Private Companies. Zeta had become David A. Steinberg's second unicorn.
On June 10, 2021, Zeta Global went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Steinberg had taken a second company public at a billion-dollar-plus valuation, something a fraction of one percent of founders ever achieve once.
Deep dive: Zeta Global's Beat-and-Raise Streak: how Steinberg's discipline compounded at scale.
Zeta Global's 20-Quarter Beat-and-Raise Streak & Athena AI Platform
Zeta's core thesis, proprietary first-party data, identity resolution, and AI-driven precision targeting, has compounded as the third-party cookie has collapsed and as AI-driven marketing has become the new baseline for enterprise customer engagement.
In Q2 2026, Zeta reported revenue of $443 million, up 44 percent year over year, exceeding the midpoint of guidance by 5 percent. The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $1.818 billion at the midpoint and posted positive GAAP net income of $8 million for the quarter. Management reported adjusted EBITDA of $92 million (20.7 percent margin, up 170 basis points year over year) and free cash flow of $58 million, up 73 percent year over year, describing the result as the "Rule of 64." The company's beat-and-raise streak reached 20 consecutive quarters, extending from the 19-quarter mark reported in Q1 2026.
The results were powered in large part by Athena by Zeta, the company's agentic AI platform that Steinberg calls the operating system for modern marketing. By Q2 2026, roughly 40 percent of Zeta's super-scaled customers were monthly active Athena users, and the company reported that AI "super users" were driving 75 percent of super-scaled customer revenue. Athena transforms marketing workflows from dashboard-driven analysis into conversational, action-oriented intelligence. Forrester has named Zeta the No. 1 leader among marketing clouds. Zeta showcases this platform every year at its Zeta Live conference, which has grown from a virtual broadcast in 2021 to a 1,800-attendee event at Lincoln Center in 2026.
David A. Steinberg has been the consistent operator voice from inside the publicly traded layer of MarTech on what AI-driven marketing actually looks like at scale: what data infrastructure makes it work, what AI architecture protects it, and what the next decade of brand-to-consumer engagement requires institutionally.
Read: Zeta Global's Beat-and-Raise Streak: Athena & OpenAI
Palantir Partnership & Enterprise Infrastructure Shift
On June 23, 2026, Zeta Global and Palantir Technologies announced a seven-year strategic partnership to build the enterprise AI infrastructure layer connecting operational intelligence, customer intelligence, and marketing execution. Under the deal, Zeta's Data Cloud will be rearchitected on Palantir's Foundry platform, making customer intelligence an enterprise asset within the same infrastructure that powers operational decision-making.
Steinberg described the partnership as potentially generating more than $100 million in annual revenue for Zeta. The announcement was made at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where Steinberg appeared alongside Elias Davis from Palantir's Office of the CEO. By its Q2 2026 report, Zeta said the Palantir relationship was already yielding multiple agreements, alongside a newer partnership with Snowflake.
The Palantir deal extends Zeta's reach beyond marketing into enterprise-wide business intelligence. Steinberg told CNBC the plan is to build a full operating system on Athena, with marketing as "just the first application" of Zeta's identity graph and AI infrastructure.
Read: Palantir Picks Zeta Global. Every Other Marketing Cloud Just Lost.
David A. Steinberg's Operating Track Record: Seven Founded Companies
Over a 30-plus-year career, David A. Steinberg has founded seven companies. Two unicorns. Both taken public. Four sold. The roster:
- Zeta Global: Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO. Co-founded with John Sculley in 2007. IPO June 2021 (NYSE: ZETA). AI-powered marketing cloud. Q2 2026 revenue: $443M (+44% YoY), 20-quarter beat-and-raise streak.
- InPhonic: Founder. The Expedia of wireless. No. 1 on the 2004 Inc. 500. Second-biggest tech IPO of 2004 behind Google. Peak market cap ~$950M.
- Sterling Cellular: Founder, 1993. Launched in his Bethesda basement. Scaled to 12 retail locations and $22M in sales by 1997.
- Sterling Communications: Founder. Communications telemarketing.
- CAIVIS Investment Corporation: Chairman, founded 2007. Vehicle for operator-led acquisitions in media and technology.
- On-Demand Pharmaceuticals: Co-Founder and Executive Chairman. Distributed pharmaceutical manufacturing.
- Seventh company: publicly referenced in Steinberg's 2026 Milken Institute biography and conference remarks.
The thread across the portfolio: each company built proprietary technology and data infrastructure as the durable moat, not partnerships, not distribution, not brand. Operator-engineered.
David A. Steinberg's Net Worth
David A. Steinberg's net worth is not disclosed as a single audited figure, and public estimates vary widely depending on what is counted. SEC Form 4 filings show Steinberg holding roughly 3.5 million shares of Zeta Global, with insider-disclosed equity valued at approximately $86 million as of August 2026, according to SEC ownership data tracked by GuruFocus. That figure captures only his disclosed stake in the one publicly traded company. It does not include cumulative liquidity from the InPhonic IPO and prior exits, real-estate holdings, or private investments made through CAIVIS Investment Corporation and his other vehicles.
Estimates built only from that SEC-disclosed Zeta stake, the kind produced by automated insider-trading trackers, have ranged from under $10 million to roughly $86 million depending on the share count and date used, because they capture a single holding rather than a full balance sheet. Broader public estimates that account for his prior exits and multi-decade operating history place David A. Steinberg's net worth in the hundreds of millions to billion-dollar range, consistent with a two-time unicorn founder who has taken both companies public. No independent, audited figure for his total net worth has been published. Zeta's build compares directly against the category's other founder-operator fortunes in Net Worth of the MarTech Builders.
What David A. Steinberg Writes & Speaks About
At Everything-PR, David A. Steinberg writes on AI marketing infrastructure, data-driven brand intelligence, generative engine optimization, and how enterprise marketing is being rebuilt around large language models. He brings the perspective of a publicly traded operator who has been building this category, not commenting on it, for nearly two decades. Read all of David A. Steinberg's Everything-PR contributions.
Education, Boards, Philanthropy & Personal Background
David A. Steinberg holds a B.A. in Economics from Washington & Jefferson College, where he serves on the Board of Trustees. He has served on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Milken Institute's FasterCures Center, and the Greater Washington Sports Alliance.
He founded the David A. Steinberg Foundation, focused on nutrition and education for disadvantaged children. He married Kristen Sanne Steinberg in 2018; see the wedding coverage from EPR's Builders series.
EPR Builders: Entrepreneurs Shaping Major Markets
- David A. Steinberg (this profile): Zeta Global, AI Marketing Infrastructure
- Richelieu Dennis: SheaMoisture, Essence Ventures, Beauty & CPG
- Marc Roberts: Miami Worldcenter, Florida real estate
- Elie Hirschfeld: Hirschfeld Properties, NY real estate & philanthropy
- Chris Burch: Burch Creative Capital, NIHI Sumba, consumer investments
- Henry Swieca: Highbridge Capital, Talpion Fund Management
- Avery Andon: ArtLife Gallery, ArtGrails, contemporary art
Read More From David A. Steinberg
- David A. Steinberg on Everything-PR: contributor archive and all published work.
- Zeta Global: the NYSE-listed AI marketing cloud platform he co-founded.
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