Steve Chen Net Worth 2024: Cofounding YouTube to Make $500 Million

Steve Chen is a Taiwanese internet entrepreneur and the co-founder of the worldwide famous video-sharing website YouTube.

From his early career days working at PayPal to launching Google’s famous video streaming service, he has boosted his fortune by millions of dollars making smart investments over the years.

In 2024, Steve Chen’s net worth has reached an all-time high of an estimated $500 million.

Chen is one of the most prominent figures in the tech industry, both as a member of the famed ‘PayPal Mafia’, and as a founder of several highly successful businesses like YouTube and AVOS Systems.

If you’re interested in how Steve Chen built his fortune over the years, below you will find the details of his life, career, and investments.

Steve Chen’s Net Worth Breakdown:

Steve Chen’s net worth estimate primarily stems from his Google stake, alongside earnings from other ventures, dividends, and real estate assets.

He doesn’t often talk much about his net worth so we don’t know whether – or how much of his Google stake Chen has sold over the years. He also most likely owns an additional stake in Google/Alphabet from employee compensation, potentially worth hundreds of millions today.

Even so, our research allowed us to estimate what he would be worth these days.

5 Fun Facts About Steve Chen:

1. Co-Founder of YouTube: Alongside Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, Steve Chen co-founded YouTube in 2005, turning a simple idea into a platform that revolutionized video sharing.
2. Early PayPal Employee: Before YouTube, Chen worked at PayPal, where he met Karim and Hurley. This team of former PayPal employees later became known as part of the “PayPal Mafia.”
3. Emmy Award: In 2019, Chen received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award for his role in transforming digital media through YouTube.
4. Born in Taiwan: Steve Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and moved to the United States with his family at the age of 7. He later attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.
5. Philanthropy: Chen and his wife, Jamie, are significant donors to cultural institutions, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Latest News & Updates

In 2024, Steve Chen has been focusing on Web3 technologies, showcasing a strong interest in decentralized platforms and blockchain-based innovations.

He has also announced plans to support entrepreneurs in Taiwan through a new initiative launching in mid-2024. This project aims to help Taiwanese startups with global market exposure, offering mentorship and financial backing. Chen’s return to his roots in Taiwan highlights his commitment to fostering innovation in the tech sector both locally and internationally.

Additionally, he remains active in philanthropy, particularly through his involvement with various cultural institutions and education initiatives.

His support for the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community continues, with ongoing donations to programs that empower underrepresented communities in the U.S.

Early Life and Education

Steve Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan on August 18, 1978. His family immigrated to Prospect Heights, Illinois when Steve was seven years old, where he enrolled at River Trails Middle School in Mount Prospect.

After middle school, Chen studied at John Hersey High School, Arlington Heights, during his freshman year, but completed the remaining three years of his high school education at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora.

Having graduated from high school, Steve Chen decided to pursue higher education, so he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study computer science, where he met the future YouTube co-founder Jawad Karim.

Chen didn’t graduate from the University of Illinois, though, since he dropped out in his junior year to pursue a career in the tech industry.

Personal Life

In 2009, Steve Chen married Park Ji-Hyun (now Jamie Chen). Park Ji Hyun is a Google Korea product marketing manager and the two have two children and live in Taipei, Taiwan these days. The Chens are known for their massive financial support of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Steve Chen Net Worth: The Success Story of YouTube’s Founder

Steve Chen moved to Silicon Valley after leaving school, landing a job at PayPal, which was just starting out at the time. It hasn’t been disclosed if this was coincidental, but he and his university friend Jawad ended up working at PayPal at the same time. They soon meet the man who would complete the YouTube trio later on, Chad Hurley.

Let’s take a closer look at how Chen ended up founding the multi-billion dollar YouTube.

Early Career Days

Steve Chen was one of the early employees of two major companies – PayPal and Facebook. He reportedly spent a few years working at Facebook before he left to start YouTube, being one of the company’s 20 first employees, working alongside Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker.

While at PayPal, Chen worked with Jawed Karim, who he knew from his university days, and met Chad Hurley. After PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, the new friends remained with the business for around three years. In 2005, they all decided to leave the venture to start a new business, YouTube. Chen spent a few months working for Facebook while they were all looking for a big business idea to invest in.

Founding YouTube

Chen, Hurley, and Karim used to meet up at Max’s Opera Café in Palo Alto, California to brainstorm ideas for their upcoming startup. Then, working out of a garage, the trio started developing the YouTube platform, focusing on creating a user-friendly interface that allows users to share and upload videos.

This marked the birth of the video-sharing platform called YouTube, which they founded in 2005. From the beginning, Steve Chen held the position of chief technology officer of the company. YouTube launched its first video titled “Me at The Zoo”, featuring Karim.

Fast forward a year, and Business 2.0 named Steve Chen one of the “50 People Who Matter Now” in business. Between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTube raised $11.5 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital and Artis Capital Management, and the business became one of the preferred options for embedding videos into web pages.

Google Acquisition of YouTube

In December 2005, YouTube became famous internationally after the Saturday Night Live sketch titled Lazy Sunday. This caused a copyright battle between YouTube and SNL, so Chen and the partners had to remove the video for a while until SNL officially uploaded it on their YouTube channel in 2013.

In October 2006, the co-founders sold YouTube to Google Inc. Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, only about a year after its founding, making this one of the fastest-growing brands in the world. At the time of the sale, Chad Hurley was the CEO of YouTube, and he retained this position for a few more years.

At the time of the sale in 2006, Sequoia Capital, one of YouTube’s major supporters and investors, made a return of 44 times its initial investment in the company. As a result of the deal, Sequoia got 941,027 Google shares, totaling more than the founders received combined.

As part of the contract, Steve Chen received Google stock of 625,366 shares, compared to the 137,443 of Karim, and the 694,087 shares of Hurley. Chen also received an additional 68,721 shares in a trust.

Based on Google’s stock value in June 2024, which is $180 a piece, Steve Chen’s Google stock would be worth over $110 million, provided that he hasn’t sold any shares in the meantime. The shares he received in a trust are worth another $12 million.

Philanthropic Endeavors

After having spent decades living in California, Steve Chen and his family returned to his birthplace in Taiwan and are working on a project to support Taiwanese people to start businesses that would help the economy. He plans to launch this project in the second quarter of 2024 and train several startup teams every eight weeks. This project would allow Taiwanese businesspeople to use outside exposure from Silicon Valley to grow.

Over the years, he has also donated millions to philanthropic organizations and charitable causes. For instance, his alma mater put his name on the high school after a gift of $1.9 million toward the innovation center at the academy. In 2021, he was one of the few American executives who donated $10 million to support the AAPI community.

Awards and Accolades

As a prominent figure in the tech industry and the business world in general, Steven Shin Chen has won several prestigious awards over the years, including:

• Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019
• The Order of Lincoln, awarded by the Governor of Illinois in 2018
• Inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois
• Great Immigrants, Great Americans honorable mention by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2014

Sourceurce

Steve Chen Net Worth: Other Businesses and Investments

Steve Chen is most known as the co-founder and previous chief technology officer of YouTube, but the company isn’t the only one contributing to his estimated net worth. In addition to YouTube, Chen co-founded at least three more businesses.

Other Businesses

When Chen and Hurley left their positions at YouTube, they decided to co-found yet another venture together, this time an internet business incubator they called AVOS Systems.

“We were working on nine products at one time, which sounds astronomical, but it wasn’t based on the way AVOS was structured. I’d say about 40 percent of all websites and iOS apps are built on the same shared technology, built and rebuilt and rebuilt again. With AVOS, all the servers and authentication and security were all written and handled, so it was much easier to test out new ideas.” – Chen shared about the venture.

The partners launched AVOS Systems in 2011 and later on, their business acquired Delicious, a bookmaking website from Yahoo! Inc.

However, AVOS later sold Delicious to Science Inc., trying to focus their business on a single product.

To date, AVOS Systems Inc. exists as an internet company that is headquartered in San Mateo, California with offices in China and New Zealand. However, we don’t know the exact stake or earnings Steve Chen holds from this venture.

Later on, the two partners co-founded an online magazine-making service they called Zeen, which was shut down.

In 2016, Chen partnered with Vijay Karunamurthy to start the live-streaming food network Nom.com. This network was shut down a year later. Nom raised a series A of $4.7 million in funding, though we don’t know if Chen ended up reaping profits from this business before it shut down.

In 2014, Steve Chen became an entrepreneur-in-residence at Google Ventures, the company’s corporate unit, where he worked on a media-related project. The details of this employment weren’t disclosed.

Real Estate

For years, Steve Chen owned a San Francisco penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton Residence, but he listed this property on the market for $8 million in 2018. He bought the penthouse in 2007 for $4.85 million. We don’t know how much he eventually sold it for, though. If he sold it for the asking price, this would make him a profit of $3.15 million.

As to which properties he owns today or where in Taiwan he lives exactly, this information isn’t publicly available.

What Can We Learn from Steve Chen’s Story?

Steve Chen’s journey highlights the importance of embracing an entrepreneurial spirit. He took tremendous risks by leaving established companies like PayPal to start his own venture, and this willingness to venture into uncharted territories to follow his dream led to the creation of YouTube, one of the most influential platforms in the world.

Chen’s ability to recognize and seize opportunities is a key takeaway. By identifying the need for a platform that allowed users to share and view videos easily, he and his co-founders created YouTube, transforming how people interact with online content. This foresight was key in turning YouTube into a global phenomenon.

Chen’s success underscores the power of networking and collaboration. His connections with future YouTube co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley from his time at PayPal were instrumental in the creation of YouTube. Building and maintaining professional relationships can open doors to new partnerships – and new opportunities.

Throughout his career, Chen demonstrated continuous adaptability and innovation. After the sale of YouTube to Google, he didn’t rest on his laurels. Instead, he went on to co-found several other businesses and even started working on projects with Google. His adaptability in the evolving tech landscape helped him ensure success and relevance in the industry.