Steve Chen (YouTube)

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For the supercomputer designer, see Steve Chen (pioneer).

Steve Chen announcing the Google acquisition of YouTube

Steve Chen (Simplified Chinese: 陈士骏; Traditional Chinese: 陳士駿; pinyin: Chén Shìjùn; born August 1978 in Taiwan) is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of the popular video sharing website YouTube.

Chen grew up in Taiwan until the age of 15, when his family immigrated to the United States. He attended high school at John Hersey High School as well as the Illinois Math and Science Academy and college from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was an early employee at PayPal, where he met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. The three later founded the YouTube video sharing website in 2005. He currently holds the position of Chief Technology Officer in Youtube.

In June 2006, Chen was named by Business 2.0 as one of the "The 50 people who matter now" in business.^[1] In August 2006, Chen told Reuters news agency it was hoped that within 18 months the site would "have every music video ever created."^[2]

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. The Google shares that he received are worth $326 million at Google's Feb. 7, 2007 closing stock price of $470.01.^[3]