Steve Chen (; born August 25, 1978) is a Taiwanese-American

Internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some Chie ...

who is one of the co-founders and previous chief technology officer of the video-sharing website

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

. After having co-founded the company

AVOS Systems MixBit was a video sharing service created by Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, two of the co-founders of YouTube. It was released on August 8, 2013. MixBit let users create dynamic shared videos, and competed with Vine (software), Vine (owned by Twitt ...

, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, he joined

Google Ventures GV is a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides Seed investment, seed, Venture capital financing, venture, and Growth investing, growth stage funding to technology companies. Founded as Google Venture ...

in 2014.

Early years and education

Chen was born in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. When he was seven years old, he and his family immigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and settled in

Prospect Heights, Illinois Prospect Heights is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States and is a suburb of Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 16,058. Geography According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Prospect Heights has a total area of , of whic ...

. He went to

River Trails Middle School River Trails School District 26 is a school district headquartered in Mount Prospect, Illinois, in the Chicago metropolitan area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midw ...

in Mount Prospect for his middle school education and

John Hersey High School John Hersey High School (also referred to as Hersey or JHHS) is a four-year public high school located in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago in the United States. It enrolls students from Arlington Heights as well as parts ...

in Arlington Heights for his freshman year of high school. For his final three years of high school, he attended the

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, or IMSA, is a three-year residential public secondary education institution in Aurora, Illinois, United States, with an enrollment of approximately 650 students. Enrollment is generally offered to inc ...

Aurora, Illinois Aurora is a city in the Chicago metropolitan area located partially in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage, Kane County, Illinois, Kane, Kendall County, Illinois, Kendall, and Will County, Illinois, Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Locat ...

. At the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

, he studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Business career

Walt Mossberg, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley

Chen was an employee at

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

, where he first met

Chad Hurley Chad Meredith Hurley (born January 24, 1977) is an American webmaster and businessman who serves as the advisor and former chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube. He also co-founded MixBit. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "5 ...

and

Jawed Karim Jawed Karim (বাংলাঃ জাওয়াদ করিম) (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to up ...

. Chen was also an early employee at

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In 2005,

and Steve Chen founded YouTube, with Chen having the position of chief technology officer. In June 2006, Chen was named by

Business 2.0 ''Business 2.0'' was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the " New Economy". First published in July 1998, the magazine was sold ...

as one of "The 50 people who matter now" in business. On October 16, 2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion. Chen received 625,366 shares of Google and an additional 68,721 in a trust as part of the sale. As of September 2021, the

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

shares are valued at almost $1.77 billion. He and Hurley started

, which acquired Delicious from

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

Inc. Chen was listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by

Asian Scientist Magazine ''Asian Scientist'' is an English language science and technology magazine published in Singapore. History and profile ''Asian Scientist'' was launched in March 2011 by Asian Scientist Publishing Pte Ltd (now known as Wildtype Media Group Pte Lt ...

on 15 May 2011. Chen started the live streaming food network Nom.com in 2016 along with Vijay Karunamurthy. In 2017, Nom.com was shut down, with its

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

feed switched to private and

account left idle since March, 2017.

Awards

Chen was inducted as a Laureate of

The Lincoln Academy of Illinois The Lincoln Academy of Illinois is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to recognizing contributions made by living Illinoisans. Named for Abraham Lincoln, the Academy administers the ''Order of Lincoln'', the highest award given ...

and awarded the

Order of Lincoln The Lincoln Academy of Illinois is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to recognizing contributions made by living Illinoisans. Named for Abraham Lincoln, the Academy administers the ''Order of Lincoln'', the highest award given ...

(the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2018.

Personal life

Chen married Park Ji-hyun, who is now Jamie Chen, a Google Korea product marketing manager, in 2009. They now live in

Taipei, Taiwan Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

with their two children. One son was born in July 2010. The Chens are major supporters of the

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture"About"
Asian Art Museum website. ...

, where Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012. From August 2019, Chen moved back to

and resides there since then, along with his family.

References

External links