Discover the biographies of the CEOs of the following tech companies: Amazon, Apple, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook), TikTok, Twitter and the American company behind ChatGPT: OpenAI.

Amazon CEO: Andy Jassy

Born January 13, 1968, Andy Jassy grew up in Scarsdale, New York. This sports enthusiast, a graduate of Harvard Business School, joined Amazon in 1997, three years after the creation of the company.

• 1997 : he joins Amazon as a marketing manager
• 2003: he helped launch AWS (Amazon Web Services) with Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and CEO at the time
• 2016: he leads the cloud branch of the AWS service
• 2018: he becomes co-owner of Kraken, franchise of the Seattle National Ice Hockey League
• July 2021: he is named CEO of Amazon and replaces Jeff Bezos

Apple CEO: Tim Cook

Tim Cook or more precisely Timothy Donald Cook, is the current CEO of Apple. Formerly chief operating officer of Apple and responsible for the company’s global sales and operations, he took over the management of the apple brand in 2011 after the departure of Steve Jobs. Since then, he has participated in the evolution of iMacs, MacBooks, iPads…

• November 1, 1960: he was born in Mobile, Alabama
• From 1982 to 1994: he works as an employee at IBM
• March 1998: he started at Apple
• March 2015: he announces that he will donate his money after his death, to charity
• August 24, 2011: he takes the post of CEO of Apple, after the resignation of Steve Jobs
• 2020: Tim Cook becomes a billionaire thanks to the actions collected by Apple

Google CEO: Sundar Pichai

Sundararajan Pichai better known as Sundar Pichai is a business executive and CEO of Google since 2015. Born in India in 1972, he studied metallurgical engineering and continued his studies in the United States. With a Master’s degree in “Engineering and materials” and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in his pocket, he then started at McKinsey as an engineering consultant.

• 2004 : he joins Google as vice president of brand products
• November 13, 2006: Google buys YouTube
• March 2013 : he is appointed to the direction of Android
• August 10, 2015: he becomes the new CEO of Google, following the restructuring of the brand and the creation of Alphabet
• December 4, 2019: he becomes CEO of Alphabet (parent company of Google)
• December 2022: Sundar Pichai receives the Padma Bhushan prize, a civil decoration awarded by the Indian government. This award is one of India’s highest honours.
• February 2023: Sundar Pichai unveils ChatGPT competitor Bard

YouTube CEO: Susan Wojcicki

Born on July 5, 1968 in California, Susan Wojcicki studied history and literature at Harvard University and graduated in 1990. She then continued studying economics and obtained an MBA in 1998. The same year, she rented her garage to two students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were working at the time on the creation of the Google search engine.

• 1999: Susan Wojcicki leaves Intel to work at Google as chief marketing officer
• 2003: she is at the origin of the AdSense program, Google’s advertising network
• 2006: she runs the Google Videos service. The same year, Google bought YouTube
• April 2011: she takes the head of the advertising department of Google
• 2014 : she becomes CEO of YouTube
• January 2023: it contributes to the launch of new monetization program for YouTube Shorts creators
• February 2023: Susan Wojcicki resigns as CEO and is replaced by Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur, Mark Elliott Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York. Fairly precocious, the current CEO of Meta studied computer languages ​​from the age of 12. It was during his years at Harvard that he launched an online directory first reserved for students at his university, which a few years later would become the Facebook social network.

• February 4, 2004: he launches TheFacebook.com with three other Harvard students
• 2005: the name of the social network becomes simply Facebook: the “The” is deleted
• 2010: movie release The Social Network which traces the creation and rise of Facebook, up to one million subscribers
• April 2012: Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion
• 2014 : Facebook buys the WhatsApp and Oculus VR messaging application, which has virtual reality as its business sector
• October 28, 2021: Facebook changes its name to Meta. Mark Zuckerberg’s goal is to become the leader in the metaverse realm
• December 10, 2021: Meta launches its metaverse called Horizon Worlds

Microsoft CEO: Satya Nadella

Originally from Hyderabad, India, Satya Nadella was born on August 19, 1967 and currently lives in Washington. After studying electronic engineering and obtaining an MBA from the University of Chicago, he began his career with the computer manufacturer Sun Microsystems, then joined Microsoft in 1992 at the age of only 24. Since its arrival, Microsoft has acquired several entities: LinkedIn, Mojang, GitHub and Xamarin.

• March 2007: he is vice president of R&D at Microsoft in the Online Services division
• 2011: he takes the head of the Servers activity
• February 4, 2014: he becomes the CEO of Microsoft and replaces Steve Balmer
• June 13, 2016: he oversees the purchase of LinkedIn for 26.2 billion dollars
• 2017: he releases a book “Hit Refresh” on his life, Microsoft and technology
• June 2021: he becomes chairman of the board of directors of Microsoft.
• February 2023: a new version of Bing is presented. The search engine integrates ChatGPT, to redesign the search experience.

LinkedIn CEO: Ryan Roslansky

Born in California in 1977, Ryan Roslansky began his entrepreneurial career at just 20 years old to launch Housing Media, an online real estate startup, with his two roommates. It will be bought in 1999 by USHousing.com.

• December 1999: he works at Yahoo as General Manager and Product Manager
• 2009: he joined LinkedIn as a product manager
• 2016: he becomes vice-president of LinkedIn
• June 2020: Ryan Roslansky named CEO of LinkedIn in place of Jeff Weiner

TikTok CEO: Shou Zi Chew

Developed by Chinese company ByteDance, the TikTok app is currently run by Shou Zi Chew. This Singaporean businessman is also the CFO of ByteDance. After studying business administration in the United States, he made his debut in 2006, at Goldman & Sachs as an investment banker and then joined the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi, in 2015.

• July 1, 2015: Shou Zi Chew joins Xiaomi as CFO
• September 2016: ByteDance launches TikTok for the non-Chinese market
• March 2021: he becomes chief financial officer of ByteDance
• April 30, 2021: Shou Zi Chew is appointed general manager of TikTok

Twitter CEO: Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. From the age of 12, he was coding his own game which he named “Blastar”. To study in the United States, he obtained Canadian nationality in 1988. An entrepreneur at heart, he began his career in business and founded a software company under the name of Zip2 with his brother in 1995. This same company will also be bought a few years later by Compaq. From, Elon Musk has created many companies: X.com which later became PayPal, Space X, Tesla Motors, Hyperloop, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

• October 2008: he becomes president of Tesla Motors, manufacturer of electric cars
• 2015 : he participated in the creation of the OpenAI research center on artificial intelligence and left its board of directors in 2018 to avoid conflicts of interest with his other activities
• July 2016: he creates Neuralink, a startup that aims to merge human and artificial intelligences
• May 6, 2002: he founded Space X, a company specializing in the field of astronautics and space flight
• October 27, 2022: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion

At the time of writing, Elon Musk is still at the head of the social network, but he has mentioned a possible resignation in December 2022.

OpenAI CEO: Sam Altman

Sam Altman was born on April 22, 1985 in Ohio and studied at the prestigious Stanford University before abandoning his studies in 2005. Then, he developed a mobile application called Loopt which allows him to share his geolocation and resells it for more than 43 millions of dollars. In 2011, he joined the renowned Silicon Valley startup incubator: Y Combinator. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk before the latter left the adventure in 2018 for “conflicts of interest”. In 2022, it makes DALL-E and ChatGPT accessible to the general public.

• 2015 : he founded OpenAI as a non-profit association
• 2019: he creates a for-profit subsidiary for OpenAI and accepts the billion dollar investment from Microsoft
• September 2022: it makes DALL-E accessible to the general public
• December 2022: it makes ChatGPT accessible to the general public
• January 2023: thanks to the rise of ChatGPT, his company OpenAI would be valued at $29 billion. At the same time, Microsoft decides to extend its partnership with OpenAI, in particular to integrate ChatGPT technology on its Bing search engine and its Microsoft 365 office suite.