Steve Chen Net Worth

What is Steve Chen's Net Worth?

Steve Chen is a Taiwanese internet entrepreneur who has a net worth of $500 million. Steve Chen is best known as one of the co-founders of YouTube, which he created alongside Chad Hurley and Jawad Karim in 2005. Born in Taiwan and raised in Illinois, Chen worked at PayPal, where he met his future YouTube co-founders.

After launching YouTube from a small office above a pizzeria in San Mateo, California, the platform grew explosively, becoming one of the internet's most visited websites within its first year. Chen served as Chief Technology Officer, helping develop the site's core features and infrastructure to handle its rapidly growing user base.

In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, making Chen and his co-founders instant tech industry stars. After the acquisition, Chen remained with YouTube until 2009, helping oversee its integration into Google and expansion.

Following YouTube, Chen partnered with Hurley again to launch AVOS Systems, which acquired Delicious from Yahoo! in 2011. He later co-founded Nom.com, a live-streaming food network, though it was short-lived. Chen has since been involved in venture capital, investing in and advising various technology startups.

Chen's innovations helped revolutionize online video sharing and earned him recognition, including being named one of Time Magazine's "Most Influential People" in 2007.

Early Life

Steve Chen was born on August 18, 1978, in Taipei, Taiwan. He was eight years old when his family immigrated to Prospect Heights, Illinois.

For college, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's unclear if this is a total coincidence, but his future YouTube co-founder Jawad Karim attended the same school. Jawad dropped out in his junior year.

PayPal

Both Steve and Jawad moved to Silicon Valley, where, once again not sure if this is coincidental, they both wound up working at PayPal, which at the time was a fledgling startup.

At PayPal, Steve and Jawad also befriended a co-worker named Chad Hurley.

In August 2000, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in cash. Steve, Jawad, and Chad all made a little bit of money from the sale. All three also stuck around for several more years. By early 2005, they had all left PayPal/eBay and were looking for the next big idea. They would frequently meet up at Max's Opera Cafe in Palo Alto, California, to brainstorm startup ideas. In the meantime, Steve actually worked at Facebook for several months.

Getty Images

YouTube

There are two versions of how YouTube was conceived. The first version has Jawad simply suggesting a video-sharing website at one of their brainstorming sessions. Jawad purportedly had the idea after Janet Jackson's breasts were exposed during the Super Bowl halftime show, and he found it difficult to locate the clip on the internet the following day. The second version, which may or may not be a bit of corporate PR/fiction, claims that Chad filmed a video at a dinner party hosted by Steve, and they realized there wasn't an easy way to upload that clip to the web.

Either way, the first version of the YouTube website was launched in February 2005. In April 2005 Jawad uploaded the very first video to the site, a video had taken months earlier while visiting the San Diego Zoo.

Around the time of their launch MySpace was quickly rising as one of the most popular websites in the world. As millions of people created MySpace accounts, they soon discovered YouTube would allow them to upload and then embed a popular music video to their MySpace page. YouTube grew in lock-step with MySpace.

In December 2005, YouTube reached a tipping point thanks to a "Saturday Night Live" sketch called "Lazy Sunday." At the time, DVRs were still not in wide use so the day after "Lazy Sunday" aired and people wanted to see this video they heard so much about from friends who did catch it live, headed to the internet. YouTube made the video easy to find and watch online. This temporarily caused a copyright skirmish between YouTube and SNL and the video was actually removed from the platform in February 2006. The clip would not reappear on YouTube until August 2013, when it was finally re-uploaded by the official SNL account.

(Photo By Jorge Gil/Europa Press via Getty Images)

Google Acquisition

On October 9, 2006, Google announced it had reached a deal to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.

Steve Chen received 625,366 Google shares in the sale. The shares were worth $326 million on the day the deal closed. If he never sold a single share, by 2021 those shares would be worth nearly $2 billion.

Chad Hurley received $345 million worth of shares. Jawad received $64 million worth of shares. Sequoia received $442 million worth of shares, and Artis received $83 million.

Personal Life

In 2009, Steve Chen married Park Ji-hyun (now Jamie Chen). At the time, Jamie was a Google Korea product marketing manager. Steve and Jamie have a son named Joseph and a daughter named Clara. They moved to Taipei, Taiwan, in 2019.

The Chens are major supporters of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco where Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012.

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