David Baszucki

David Brent Baszucki, also known by his Roblox username builderman, is a Canadian-born American entrepreneur, engineer, and software developer. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Roblox Corporation. He co-founded and was the CEO of Knowledge Revolution, which was acquired by MSC Software in December 1998.

In December 2003, Baszucki and Erik Cassel, who had worked as his vice president of engineering for "Interactive Physics," began developing an early prototype of Roblox. The project started under the working title "eBlocks," then was renamed "GoBlocks," followed by "DynaBlocks." It became "Roblox," a portmanteau of "robots" and "blocks," in January 2004. The website launched later that year, while Roblox was officially released on Sept. 1, 2006. In a 2016 interview, Baszucki said the idea for Roblox was inspired by the success of his "Interactive Physics" and "Working Model" software applications, especially among young students.

Baszucki owns roughly a 13% stake in Roblox Corporation, a stake estimated at about $470 million as of 2020. He has said he would donate any future compensation he earns from Roblox’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange for philanthropic purposes.

In 2021, a New York Times investigation reported that Baszucki and his relatives used a tax break intended for small business investors to legally avoid tens of millions of dollars in capital gains taxes. That same year, Business Insider listed him as the seventh-highest-paid CEO, with earnings of $232.8 million.

Also in 2021, after Roblox’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Baszucki and his wife launched the Baszucki Group, a philanthropic organization, and started the Baszucki Brain Research Fund to provide grants to bipolar research programs. Later that year, the University of California, San Francisco launched the Baszucki Lymphoma Therapeutics Initiative, supported by $6 million in donations from Baszucki over five years, to improve the effectiveness and availability of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for lymphoma patients.

In 2022, Baszucki, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Keystone Capital chairman Kent Dauten pledged a combined $150 million toward bipolar disorder research and treatment.