Steve Chen
For his entrepreneurial spirit as a co-founder of YouTube and for his internet technology innovations.
Steve Chen is an internet entrepreneur and one of the co-founders and former chief technology officer of YouTube.
He first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1999 to join PayPal and later joined forces with two of his colleagues to develop YouTube.
Chen was instrumental in building YouTube into a viral video phenomenon. In 2006, less than a year after launching the site, Chen helped lead YouTube through the $1.65 billion Google acquisition. As the company's key technologist, Chen is credited with developing the company’s massive data centers and helping build YouTube into a premier entertainment destination and one of the most popular web sites on the Internet today.
In 2005, he worked at Facebook for several months. He is also co-founder of AVOS Systems, which builds a common technology platform to speed app development and whose products help people create, find and share multimedia content.
He was honored with The Grainger College of Engineering Department of Computer Science’s Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2014.
In 2018, Chen was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln, the state’s highest honor.
Today, Chen resides in Taiwan with his family where he has been investing in Taiwan’s tech startup ecosystem.
Degrees
- Attendee, Computer Science, The Grainger College of Engineering