Steve Chen

Tech entrepreneur Steve Chen remains at the forefront of the global digital revolution. As co-founder and founding CTO of YouTube, he helped transform a simple idea for sharing videos online into a platform that reshaped media, culture and communication for billions of people – and laid the foundations for today’s AI-driven creator and recommendation ecosystems.

In 2005, Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim set out to make it easy for anyone, anywhere, to upload and share video. Within months of launch, YouTube became a global phenomenon. Less than two years after its founding, Google acquired the company for $1.65 billion, and Chen stayed on to lead YouTube’s next phase of hyper-growth.

At Google, Chen oversaw all core aspects of YouTube’s development, from engineering and product design to site operations. As an engineer, he helped design the massive data centers and infrastructure that enabled YouTube to scale globally and reliably. As a product leader, he drove features and early recommendation and discovery tools that turned YouTube from a simple video-sharing site into a social media platform and one of the world’s most influential, data- and AI-powered entertainment ecosystems.

Chen’s journey to Silicon Valley is as compelling as his list of achievements. Born in Taiwan, he moved to suburban Chicago at the age of eight and later earned a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois. He went on to become one of the early employees at PayPal, working alongside the group of founders and executives later known as the “PayPal Mafia” – including figures such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel – who would go on to shape much of today’s tech landscape. After PayPal, he joined Facebook in its early days before deciding, just a few months later, to build a company of his own: YouTube. In 2019, his impact on the industry was recognised with a lifetime achievement Emmy Award.

Beyond YouTube, Chen has been deeply involved in mentoring and scaling new ventures. For years he worked with Google Ventures, helping start-ups refine their products, business models and go-to-market strategies. Now based in Taiwan, he plays an active role in the country’s fast-growing start-up ecosystem, advising entrepreneurs and supporting the next generation of global tech companies as they navigate AI, data and platform innovation. On stage, keynote speaker Steve Chen combines the credibility of a true internet pioneer with candid, practical insights on entrepreneurship, innovation, product design and the future of digital media, platforms and AI-enabled business models.