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

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

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

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

. After he co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, he joined Google Ventures in 2014.

Early life and education

Chen was born in

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. When he was seven years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1986 and settled in Prospect Heights, Illinois. He went to River Trails Middle School in Mount Prospect for his middle school education and John Hersey High School 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 in

Aurora, Illinois Aurora is a city in northeastern Illinois, United States. It is located along the Fox River (Illinois River tributary), Fox River west of Chicago. It is the List of municipalities in Illinois, second-most populous city in Illinois, with a popul ...

. After graduating from high school, Chen was educated at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

, where he studied

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

, then decided to leave the university in 1999 in order to go to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

Business career

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 E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, 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, a since closed video sharing service. In October 2006 ...

and

Jawed Karim Jawed Karim (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur. He is one of the co-founders of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. The site's inaugural video, "Me at the zoo", uploaded o ...

. Chen was also an early employee at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In 2005, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen founded YouTube, with Chen having the position of chief technology officer. In June 2006, Chen was named by Business 2.0 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 shares are valued at almost $1.77 billion. He and Hurley started AVOS Systems, which acquired Delicious from

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

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

Asian Scientist ''Asian Scientist'' is an English language science and technology magazine published in Singapore. History and profile ''Asian Scientist'' was launched as a blog in March 2011 by Juliana Chan. The blog's popularity eventually led to a partnersh ...

'' 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, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

feed switched to private and its Facebook account left idle since March 2017.

Awards

Chen was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2018.

Personal life

In 2009, Chen married Park Ji-hyun, a Google Korea product marketing manager, who changed her name to Jamie Chen. They have two children, including a son who was born in July 2010. The Chens are major supporters of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, where Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012. In August 2019, the Chens moved to

Taipei, Taiwan , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

References

External links