Ayman Rafic Hariri (born 16 May 1978) is a Lebanese billionaire businessman, the second-youngest son of tycoon

Rafic Hariri Rafic Bahaa El Deen Al Hariri ( ar, رفيق بهاء الدين الحريري; 1 November 1944 – 14 February 2005) was a Lebanese business tycoon and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and again from ...

. He is the CEO and co-founder of the social network Vero, and the former deputy CEO of

Saudi Oger Saudi Oger Ltd ( ar, سعودي أوجيه), was a Saudi construction company, incorporated in January 1978 with its headquarters in Riyadh Riyadh (, ar, الرياض, 'ar-Riyāḍ, lit.: 'The Gardens' Najdi pronunciation: ), formerly kn ...

Early life

Ayman Hariri is the second-youngest son of

. Born in Saudi Arabia, Ayman moved to Paris at age 12 to attend school.Breaking Away: Billionaire Ayman Hariri on Becoming A Tech Entrepreneur
''Forbes''. Retrieved 5 August 2020. He moved to the United States to study at Georgetown University and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in computer science.

Career

While at Georgetown he interned at Intelsat as a programmer. After college, Hariri co-founded Epok with Scott Birnbaum in 2001. Epok was a distributed software platform designed to enable cross-network collaboration mostly designed for enterprises. The company primarily dealt with data privacy. Following his father's assassination on 14 February 2005, Hariri returned to Saudi Arabia to support his family's business and after some years became deputy CEO and deputy chairman of

, one of the largest construction companies in Saudi Arabia. While at Saudi Oger, Hariri oversaw some of the biggest projects the company undertook including

King Abdullah University for Science and Technology King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; ar, جامعة الملك عبد الله للعلوم و التقنية ') is a private research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 2009, the university provi ...

(KAUST), Princess Noura University in Riyadh and the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh and other major public projects. In 2013, he left Saudi Oger and divested from the company in 2016. After a few years of development, Hariri launched the ad-free social network Vero in 2015. As of February 2018, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

'' estimated his net worth at US$1.33 billion.

Controversy

Saudi Oger

In late February 2018, Hariri's social media company, Vero, saw a marked increase in users and scrutiny. This scrutiny focused especially on Saudi Oger's inability to pay its migrant workers during 2016. According to a statement to ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

'' and ''

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...

'' from Vero, he ceased duties as deputy CEO and deputy chairman of his family's construction company in 2013. However, ''Gizmodo'' found references to his still being in those positions as late as February 2016, after the company's founding, including in one of Vero's press releases.

Russia

In February 2018, a Twitter user criticized VERO for employing Russian developers in its team and questioned whether the app could be trusted on that basis. In a statement to ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', a Vero spokesman confirmed that the company does, "like almost every global technology company" use developers from across the world including the US, Russia, UK, Europe and Africa and dismissed the claim as baseless.

Personal life

Hariri is married and has three children He lives in Paris, France. Hariri has a collection of rare comic books, named ''The Impossible Collection'' which he exhibited in London in 2016 at the premiere of '' Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hariri, Ayman 20th-century Saudi Arabian businesspeople 21st-century Saudi Arabian businesspeople 1978 births

Ayman Ayman ( ar, أيمن, also spelled as Aiman, Aimen, Aymen, or Eymen in the Latin alphabet) is an Arabic masculine given name. It is derived from the Arabic Semitic root () for ''right'', and literally means ''righteous'', ''he who is on the right' ...

Lebanese billionaires Lebanese businesspeople Living people Saudi Arabian people of Lebanese descent Lebanese people of Palestinian descent