When 69-year-old CEO Richard “Rick” Halpern sold his company, TechCore Systems, for a staggering $1 billion earlier this year, he didn’t pop champagne or retreat to a tropical island. Instead, he wrote 19 checks, each with enough zeros to change a life.
“I’ve been lucky,” Halpern said in an exclusive interview at the company’s former San Diego headquarters. “But more importantly, I’ve been surrounded by people who helped build this company from nothing. They stuck with me when they could have walked away. This is my way of saying thank you.”
All 19 employees, most of whom joined TechCore in its early startup days more than a decade ago, became instant millionaires. Some were given stock options. Some got bonus packages. And a handful received direct cash payments when the deal closed.
The gesture has drawn Halpern praise from all corners of business and social media, where he’s been celebrated as a “compassionate capitalist” and a “model for modern leadership.” But the gentleman in the eye of the storm is unflappable, down-to-earth, and reserved in his thoughts.
“I’m not a hero,” he maintains. “I simply did what I think any founder would do when their people have put their lives on the line for the dream.”
TechCore Systems started, as with many technology firms, in a garage. Halpern, in his early 50s in 2007, had just quit a successful stint as a systems engineer at Lockheed Martin. He had almost nothing more than savings, some contracts, and an interest in streamlined software design to start the company from the ground up.
“I mortgaged my house. Twice,” Halpern laughed. “My wife thought I was crazy. But I had a vision of what we could create—and I found people who shared that vision.”
Those individuals were engineers, administrators, and a former Navy systems analyst named Tracy Donovan, who came on board in 2009 and eventually served as TechCore’s COO.
We felt more like a family than an organization,” said Donovan, who saw a payout of over $3 million from the sale. “Rick treated people with dignity. We didn’t have ping-pong tables and kombucha on tap—we had loyalty, mentorship, and a clear mission.
That mandate? To make software solutions more efficient for defense, logistics, and aerospace companies—industries so frequently bogged down by inefficiency and legacy systems. TechCore’s proprietary platform made large-scale project integration easier for big clients such as Raytheon, Boeing, and NASA.
The deal to Titan Technologies, a Swiss-based multination conglomerate, was closed in April 2025. Although the takeover took some in the technology world by surprise, insiders were aware that Halpern had been taking bids for more than a year.
“He wasn’t interested in the highest bidder,” said Michael Torres, a money man who worked intimately with TechCore. “He wanted someone who would treat the team, the product, and the culture right.”
The $1 billion tally comprised $300 million in cash and $700 million in stock and earn-outs, a deal that made Halpern himself incredibly rich. But the portion that made headlines wasn’t his personal fortune, it was how much he shared.
“I told myself years ago: if we ever struck gold, I’m taking my people with me,” Halpern said. “No one gets ahead alone.”
Many of the new millionaires have remained quiet about their windfalls. One longtime receptionist, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was “in total shock” when she saw her bonus.
“I didn’t think I would get anything more than my last paycheck,” she said. “But Rick sat down with me and said, ‘You’ve been the heart of this place for 14 years.’ Then he handed me a letter and a check. I cried the whole way home.”
Some will use the funds to retire, pay off mortgages, send kids to college, or start businesses. A former software architect is already starting a nonprofit to teach programming to underprivileged youth in Oakland.
Halpern himself has no intention of going back into the corporate world. “This was my last dance,” he cracked with a smile. “Now, I want to write, travel, and maybe teach. But above all, I just want to enjoy what we built—and who we built it with.”
In an age of expanding income inequality and heightened scrutiny of executive pay, Halpern’s action is in diametrical opposition to typical corporate behavior.
“He is a counter-narrative to the standard exit story,” Stanford University business ethics professor Dr. Malia Chen said. “While most CEOs exit with golden parachutes, Rick Halpern made sure some others got a ride, too. That doesn’t happen often, and it’s deeply powerful.”
Not everyone considers it reproducible. Critics suggest that the nature of Halpern’s company – a private company with wide internal distribution of equity made such generosity possible in a manner public corporations do not.
Nevertheless, to employees who worked at TechCore, the move wasn’t about appearances. it was about principles.
“He believed in us,” said Donovan, the former COO. “And when the time was right, he didn’t cash out, he paid it forward.”
Since the acquisition in the weeks that have followed, Halpern has gotten hundreds of letters, messages, and social media posts from individuals moved by his experience. He’s declined every media offer to book a deal thus far, though he admits he’s thinking about writing a memoir: if only to “document the journey for my grandkids.”
His old office is empty, the words “TechCore Systems” to be quickly forgotten as they are replaced by Titan Technologies branding. But in the break room, there remains one little, handwritten note on a board above the coffee machine. It says:
“We rise together. – RH”
It is a humble reminder of the culture he created: a place where loyalty was valued, hard work was rewarded, and success was shared.
“I didn’t do this for applause,” Halpern said, lingering in the emptying hallway for one final time. “I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
