What is Steve Chen's Net Worth?
Steve Chen, a Taiwanese internet entrepreneur, is renowned for co-founding YouTube and serving as its Chief Technology Officer. Currently, he boasts a net worth of $500 million. In October 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Following YouTube, Steve and his co-founder Chad Hurley ventured into a new project called MixBit.
Early Life
Born on August 18, 1978, in Taipei, Taiwan, Steve Chen emigrated to Prospect Heights, Illinois, at the age of eight. He pursued higher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, coincidentally the same institution attended by his future YouTube co-founder Jawad Karim. Notably, Jawad left college during his junior year.
PayPal
Upon moving to Silicon Valley, Steve and Jawad both secured jobs at the nascent startup PayPal. There, they became friends with Chad Hurley.
eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2000, benefiting Steve, Jawad, and Chad financially. They continued working at PayPal for years before deciding to leave in early 2005 to brainstorm new startup ideas at Max's Opera Cafe in Palo Alto. Steve briefly worked at Facebook during this period.
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YouTube
The inception of YouTube has two popular narratives. In one, Jawad suggested the idea of a video-sharing platform triggered by the difficulty in finding a clip of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl incident. Another version involves Chad filming a video at Steve's dinner party and realizing the challenge of uploading it online.
Regardless, YouTube launched its initial version in February 2005. Jawad uploaded the first video in April 2005, filmed at the San Diego Zoo. With MySpace's rise, users found YouTube an effective means to share and embed videos, propelling its popularity.
In December 2005, a breakthrough moment occurred with the "Lazy Sunday" SNL sketch. The sketch's popularity caused YouTube's views to skyrocket, despite some copyright issues that led to the video's temporary removal from the platform.
Google Acquisition
Google announced its acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock on October 9, 2006. Steve Chen received 625,366 Google shares, worth $326 million when the deal closed. By 2021, those shares could have been valued at almost $2 billion, had he retained them. Chad Hurley, Jawad, Sequoia, and Artis also received substantial amounts of Google shares.
Personal Life
In 2009, Steve married Park Ji-hyun, now known as Jamie Chen, a former Google Korea product marketing manager. The couple has two children, Joseph and Clara. In 2019, they moved to Taipei, Taiwan.
The Chen family actively supports the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, with Jamie being appointed as a trustee in July 2012.
