Newell is the co-founder of Valve, a closely held video game developer that's created titles such as Half Life, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike. It also operates Steam, an entertainment platform that enables millions of gamers to play online concurrently and had nearly 30,000 games available on it as of May 2022.
Gabe Newell's net worth of $7.38B can buy ...
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Newell co-founded Valve, the closely held video game developer that operates gaming platform Steam and game Counter-Strike. Steam can support millions of gamers playing concurrently and nearly 30,000 games were available on it as of May 2022, according to its website.
Valve was valued at $7.7 billion in May 2022 based on Bloomberg calculations and discussions with Michael Pachter, a Los Angeles-based analyst at Wedbush Securities. This value has been adjusted for the performance of the Russell 1000 Electronic Entertainment Index since then.
Newell's ownership stake isn't disclosed and he's assumed to hold 50.1% of Valve to reflect his control of the company and status as co-founder.
Doug Lombardi, a spokesperson for Valve, didn't respond to requests for comment on the net worth calculation.
Gabe Newell was born Nov. 3, 1962. He began working at working at Microsoft in 1983 after dropping out of Harvard University, according to a February 2013 press release by the British Academy Games Awards. At Microsoft he worked on early versions of Windows before leaving in 1996 to found gamemaker Valve with fellow Microsoft coder Mike Harrington.
The studio's debut title, Half-Life, was released in 1998 and won more than 50 game-of-the-year awards. More hits, including Portal and Left 4 Dead followed. The company also developed online gaming platform Steam, which has 35 million active users, according to Valve's website.