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Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), nicknamed Gaben, is an American businessman and the president of the video game company Valve.

Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000, making Newell the sole owner.

Newell led development of Valve's digital distribution service Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011. As of 2021, Newell owned at least one quarter of Valve. He is the richest person in the video games industry and one of the wealthiest people in the United States. In December 2021, Forbes estimated Newell's net worth at US$ 3.9 billion.