Jawed Karim Net Worth - Man Behind Youtube
Nowadays, YouTube is in full swing. Whether you are a student, business owner, working professional, housewife, or even a child below the age of 18, everyone watches YouTube videos on their phone or laptop to educate or entertain themselves. Have you ever wondered who the co-founder of YouTube is? And what is their total net worth as a co-founder of this video platform?
Jawed Karim Net Worth
Let's start to get answers to these questions. Jawed Karim is the co-founder of YouTube, and in this article, we are going to learn about Jawed Karim's net worth.
Who is Jawed Karim?
Jawed Karim is a German software engineer and entrepreneur, known as one of the co-founders of YouTube. Along with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, he launched YouTube in February 2005.
Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12729490
He is not active on any social media, like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. The profile seems to be reported as a fake one.
Birth of Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim was born on 28 October 1979 in Merseburg, East Germany. In 1992, his family relocated to the United States.
His nationality is American but of Bangladeshi and German ascent.
His father is a researcher, and his mother is a scientist, who became a professor at the University of Minnesota.
In his junior year, he left his studies and took a job in today’s most well-known company named - PayPal. After a while, he continued his studies online and took in-person classes at Santa Clara University.
The First Video on YouTube
He is not active on any social media, like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Profiles claiming to be him seem to be reported as fake.
Birth of Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim was born on October 28, 1979, in Merseburg, East Germany. In 1992, his family relocated to the United States. His nationality is American, but he is of Bangladeshi and German descent. His father is a researcher, and his mother is a scientist who became a professor at the University of Minnesota.
In his junior year, he left his studies and took a job at a well-known company named PayPal. After a while, he continued his studies online and took in-person classes at Santa Clara University.
The First Video on YouTube
In 2002, Jawed Karim met Steve Chen and Chad Hurley while working at PayPal. One day, the three of them attended a dinner party and wanted to share videos of the event with their friends. At the time, it was very difficult to share videos online due to the lack of a suitable platform.
This event led to the rise of YouTube. With their tech backgrounds, they started working on it and created this video-sharing platform. Nowadays, everyone can upload, share, and watch videos, and they can also monetize them after reaching a given threshold.
The first video on YouTube was uploaded by Jawed Karim with the title “Me at the Zoo” It's just a 19-second video showing elephants in the background. This video was uploaded on a channel named Jawed at 8:27 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2005.
The Google Acquisition
In 2006, Google saw the potential of YouTube and acquired it for $1.65 billion.
The Statista reports shows the brand value of YouTube in 2023 reached $27.71 billion, which is about a 1698% increment in that value.
As a co-founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim became wealthy after Google's acquisition of YouTube. However, the actual figure of his share has not been publicly disclosed, which sometimes leads to speculation.
Do you want to know about Jawed Karim's net worth? If so, you are at the right place because we are going to reveal Jawed Karim's net worth.
As previously mentioned, he is the co-founder of YouTube and participated in the Google acquisition. He received 137,443 equity shares of Google worth $64 million at that time. Google later executed two 2-for-1 stock splits, one in 2014 and another in 2015. Consequently, Jawed’s 137,443 shares multiplied by four, resulting in 549,772 shares.
Thus, Jawed Karim's net worth is approximately $766 million, based on Google's stock price of $139.46 per share in March 2024 and his 549,772 shares. He also invested in Airbnb, and in March 2008, he founded a new venture named Youniversity.
Last Words
Jawed Karim's contribution is significant in internet history, as YouTube has become the most popular video-sharing platform globally. According to 2024 statistics, YouTube has 2.7 billion active users. In short, his net worth has grown from $300 million to $766 million, according to recent studies, and it is expected to skyrocket with his new ventures and investments.
