Company Founders and Co-founders

Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870.

Kenneth Lee Lay (April 15, 1942, July 5, 2006) was an American businessman and political donor who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron.

Walter Percy Chrysler (April 2, 1875, August 18, 1940) was an American industrial pioneer in the automotive industry, automotive industry executive, and the founder and namesake of American Chrysler Corporation.

A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen.

He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

A pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Jobs co-founded Apple Inc. with his early business partner Steve Wozniak as Apple Computer Company in 1976.

In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. (originally called Apple Computer) with his early business partner Steve Jobs.

He made his fortune from the software firm JetBrains, co-founded with Sergey Dmitriev.

Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman and computer scientist who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin.

Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( BAY-zohss; né Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman, and the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company.

Bernard John Ebbers (August 27, 1941, February 2, 2020) was a Canadian-American businessman and the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of WorldCom.

Jay Van Andel (June 3, 1924, December 7, 2004) was an American billionaire businessman, best known as co-founder of the Amway Corporation, along with Richard DeVos.

Richard Marvin DeVos Sr. (March 4, 1926, September 6, 2018) was an American billionaire businessman, co-founder of Amway with Jay Van Andel (company restructured as Alticor in 2000), and owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team.

He is the founder of the Jack Ma Foundation, and co-founder of Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital.

She founded Spanx, an intimate apparel company with pants and leggings, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Feodor Ingvar Kamprad (Swedish: [ˈɪ̌ŋːvar ˈkǎmːprad] ; 30 March 1926-27 January 2018) was a Swedish billionaire businessman who founded IKEA in 1943 and grew it into a multinational retail company that became the world's largest furniture seller in 2008.

He is the founder and Non-executive Chairman of major South African mining company African Rainbow Minerals, which has interests in gold, ferrous metals, base metals, and platinum.

In 1977, Dangote founded the Dangote Group, a small company that traded commodities; importing sugar, salt, and food products.

Dhirajlal Hirachand "Dhirubhai" Ambani (28 December 1932-6 July 2002) was an Indian businessman who founded Reliance Industries in 1958.

Maksymilian Rafailovych "Max" Levchin (born July 11, 1975) is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of Affirm, a buy now, pay later financial services company, and co-founded PayPal as Confinity in 1998, leading the company as chief technology officer before its

He is the founder of the company reCAPTCHA, which was sold to Google in 2009, and the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo.

David Elliot Shaw (born March 29, 1951) is an American billionaire, scientist, and founder of hedge fund D.

Charles Matthew "Chuck" Geschke (September 11, 1939, April 16, 2021) was an American businessman and computer scientist best known for founding the graphics and publishing software company Adobe Inc. with John Warnock in 1982, with whom he also co-created the PDF document format.

Akio Morita (盛田 昭夫, Morita Akio; January 26, 1921, October 3, 1999) was a Japanese entrepreneur and co-founder of Sony along with Masaru Ibuka.

Ren Zhengfei (Chinese: 任正非; born 25 October 1944) is a Chinese entrepreneur and engineer who is the founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies, which is located in Shenzhen, China, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers of telecommunications equipment and smartphones.

Dame Anita Lucia Roddick (née Perella; 23 October 1942-10 September 2007) was a British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner, best known as the founder of The Body Shop, The Body Shop International Limited, a cosmetics company producing and retailing natural beauty products which shaped

He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which, when sold, had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

Zhang Ruimin (Chinese: 张瑞敏; born 5 January 1949) is a Chinese business executive who founded Haier Group and served as its chairman and chief executive officer from 1984 until 2021.

He moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio (now the Walt Disney Company) with his brother Roy.

He is the co-founder of Netflix, which provides the eponymous streaming service.

Philip Hampson Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American billionaire businessman who is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., a global sports footwear, equipment and apparel company.

He co-founded the software company Oracle Corporation, and was its CEO from 1977 to 2014.

He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies, of which he owns a 40% stake in 2026.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman and programmer who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, and its valuation soared in the early 2010s after it claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that needed only very small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick.

Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as a "poster boy" for crypto, with FTX having a global reach with more than 130 international affiliates.

Drayton is the founder, chair and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports social entrepreneurs worldwide.

He founded Parmalat in 1961, after dropping out of college.

Zuckerman, he co-founded Boston Properties in 1970.

Fred Luddy (born 1954) is an American billionaire businessman, and the founder of ServiceNow, a cloud computing company.

He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim.

He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer.

He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO at the company until 2003.

Kenneth Harry Olsen (February 20, 1926, February 6, 2011) was an American engineer who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson and his brother Stan Olsen.

Anderson (October 15, 1929, January 30, 2019) was an American engineer and entrepreneur, best known for co-founding, together with Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which later became the second-largest computer company in the world.

Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925, October 5, 1996) was an American electrical engineer, computer scientist, mathematician, and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research, which built many of these machines.

As a businessman, Wolfram is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research, where he works as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine.

Theodore W. "Theo" Gray is a co-founder of Wolfram Research, science author, and co-founder of app developer Touch Press.

Christopher Curry (born 28 January 1946) is a British businessman and the co-founder of Acorn Computers, with Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper.

He is a founding partner at Cambridge AI Venture Partners and since 2025 has been chairman of CommonAI Community Interest Company and CommonAI Compute Ltd.

He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon.

Jack Tramiel (, trə-MEL; born Idek Trzmiel, Polish pronunciation: [ˈidɛk ˈtʂmjɛl]; December 13, 1928, April 8, 2012) was a Polish-American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International.

Walter Herschel Beech (January 30, 1891, November 29, 1950) was an American aviator and early aviation entrepreneur who co-founded the Beech Aircraft Company (now called Beechcraft) in 1932 with his wife, Olive Ann Beech, and a team of three others.

Olive Ann Beech (September 25, 1903, July 6, 1993) was an American aerospace businesswoman who was the co-founder, president, and chairwoman of the Beech Aircraft Corporation.

Theodore Arthur Wells (March 12, 1907, September 25, 1991) was an American aircraft engineer, co-founder of the Beech Aircraft Corporation, and the lead designer of the Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing.

In 1910 he formed, with his brother Samuel, the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

He is best known as the principal founder of the Cessna Aircraft Corporation, which he started in 1927 in Wichita, Kansas.

Roos (April 26, 1888, October 6, 1964) was an American entrepreneur and the founder or co-founder of several early aircraft companies.

The Klapmeier brothers, Alan Lee Klapmeier (born October 6, 1958) and Dale Edward Klapmeier (born July 2, 1961), are American retired aircraft designers and aviation entrepreneurs who together founded Cirrus Aircraft (as Cirrus Design Company) in 1984.

Glenn Hammond Curtiss (May 21, 1878, July 23, 1930) was an American aviation and motorcycling pioneer, and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry.

In 1909 Herring joined Glenn Curtiss to create the Herring-Curtiss Company.

John Francis Dodge (October 25, 1864, January 14, 1920) was an American automobile manufacturing pioneer and co-founder of Dodge Brothers Company.

Horace Elgin Dodge Sr. (May 17, 1868, December 10, 1920) was an American automobile manufacturing pioneer and co-founder of Dodge Brothers Company.

Claude (Claudius) Honoré Désiré Dornier (14 May 1884-5 December 1969) was a Franco-German airplane designer and founder of Dornier GmbH.

In 1913, Fairey joined Short Brothers as chief engineer and in 1915, he formed his own company, Fairey Aviation.

James Alexander Holden (1 April 1835-1 June 1887) was the businessman who founded the South Australian company which eventually produced the Holden automobile.

Den was also a co-founder of Kaishinsha Motorcar Works, a predecessor to present-day Nissan and the original manufacturer of Datsun automobiles.

Yoshisuke Aikawa (or Gisuke Ayukawa) (鮎川 義介, Aikawa Yoshisuke; 6 November 1880-13 February 1967) was a Japanese entrepreneur, businessman, and politician, noteworthy as the founder and first president of the Nissan zaibatsu, one of Japan's most powerful business conglomerates around the time of the Second World War.

He was the founding president of the Piper Aircraft Corporation and led the company from 1929 until his death in 1970.

Clarence Gilbert Taylor (September 8, 1898, March 29, 1988) was an early American aviation entrepreneur and co-founder of the Taylor Brothers Aircraft Corporation (later named the Piper Aircraft Corporation) in Rochester, New York.

He is best known as one of the chief founding team members, together with Frederick Rentschler, of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft.

Pease and Stephenson had jointly established a company in Newcastle to manufacture locomotives.

In 1823, the Stephensons and Pease founded Robert Stephenson and Company to manufacture locomotives; the company designed such locomotives as the Lancashire Witch in 1828 and the John Bull in 1831, the latter of which became the first steam locomotive to run in New Jersey.

Franklin Davis Robinson (January 14, 1930, November 12, 2022) was an American aeronautical engineer and the founder of Robinson Helicopter Company in Torrance, California.

Thomas Worcester Hyde (January 16, 1841, December 14, 1899) was an American Union Army colonel, a state senator from Maine, and the founder of the Bath Iron Works, one of the major shipyards in the United States.

Édouard de Niéport, usually known as Édouard Nieuport (1875-1911) was the co-founder with his brother Charles of the eponymous Nieuport aircraft manufacturing company, Société Anonyme Des Établissements Nieuport, formed in 1909 at Issy-les-Moulineaux.

He received French citizenship in 1946 and is remembered as the founder and proprietor of the automobile manufacturing company Automobiles E.

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman (19 May 1928-16 December 1982) was an English design engineer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry, and founder of the sports car company Lotus Cars.

With his brother Henry, he co-founded the H & C Studebaker Company, precursor of the Studebaker Corporation, which built Pennsylvania-German Conestoga wagons and carriages during his lifetime, and automobiles after his death, in South Bend, Indiana.

John Mohler Studebaker (10 October 1833-16 March 1917) was the Pennsylvania Dutch co-founder and later executive of what would become the Studebaker Corporation automobile company.

He founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan, on August 21, 1897.

Together with Keith Duckworth, he co-founded Cosworth Engineering, a producer of Ford-funded and sponsored engines.

After only three years with Lotus, Duckworth, along with fellow Lotus employee Mike Costin, founded Cosworth, a racing engine design and development firm, in 1958.

Penske found them financial backing from General Motors and the four parties each took a 25% share in a new company, Ilmor Engineering, with Morgan looking after the manufacturing and commercial side of the business and Illien in charge of the design work.

Paul Jonathan Morgan (29 July 1948-12 May 2001) was a British engineer who co-founded Ilmor Engineering with Mario Illien in 1983.

Latécoère was the founder of the aeronautical industry in Toulouse.

He is the founder and chairman of Geely.

Peterman, short for Theodore Alfred "Al" Peterman, was the founder of Peterbilt Motors Company.

Robert Stephenson and Company was founded in Newcastle in 1823 to manufacture locomotives, with Pease as one of the principals.

During the 1970s, Kildall created the operating system CP/M among other operating systems and programming tools, and subsequently founded Digital Research, Inc. to market and sell his software products.

In 1974, she co-founded Digital Research, the company that developed the first computer language, the first compiler and the first mainstream operating system for microcomputers.

Mike Lazaridis, OC, FRS (born March 14, 1961) is a Canadian businessman who co-founded Research In Motion (now BlackBerry Limited), the company that created and manufactured the BlackBerry wireless handheld device.

He is best known as the co-founder of Research In Motion (now known as BlackBerry) alongside his childhood friend, Mike Lazaridis.

He established Atari, Inc., and the Chuck E.

Samuel Frederick "Ted" Dabney Jr. (May 2, 1937, May 26, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, and the co-founder, alongside Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, Inc.

Leo Leroy Beranek (September 15, 1914, October 10, 2016) was an American acoustician, former MIT professor, and a founder and former president of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (now BBN Technologies).

He was one of the founders of the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which built the ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet.

Arthur Whitney (born October 20, 1957) is a Canadian computer scientist most notable for developing three programming languages inspired by APL: A+, k, and q, and for co-founding the U.S. companies Kx Systems and Shakti Software.

Samuel David Camillo Olivetti (13 August 1868, December 1943) was an Italian electrical engineer and founder of Olivetti & Co., SpA., the Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.

John N. "Jack" Little is an American electrical engineer and, in 1984, the CEO and co-founder of MathWorks and a co-author of early versions of the company's MATLAB product.

In 1984, he co-founded MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize this program.

Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured on the cover of the November 1971 issue of Popular Electronics.

Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African and British entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the Linux operating system variant Ubuntu.

He is best known for developing the SAS software suite and for co-founding SAS Institute.

He has been the CEO of SAS since 1976, which he co-founded that year with other faculty members of North Carolina State University.

Sall (born 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and computer software developer, who co-founded SAS Institute, an analytics software company, and created the JMP statistical software.

James Joseph Truchard (born June 25, 1943, in Austin County, Texas) is an American billionaire, electrical engineer, and a businessman who is the co-founder and former president and CEO of National Instruments, a company producing automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software.

Vivek Yeshwant Ranadivé ( vee-VEK RUN-ə-DIV-ay; born 7 October 1957) is an American business executive, engineer, author, speaker and philanthropist Ranadivé is the founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of TIBCO Software, a business intelligence software company, and of Teknekron Software Systems.

Sheryl Handler (born 1955) is an American businesswoman recognized as one of the founders of Thinking Machines.

Adam Osborne (6 March 1939-18 March 2003) was a British author, software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere.

Sugar began consumer electronics company Amstrad, in 1968.

He co-founded Palm Computing where he co-created the PalmPilot, the Palm Treo and Handspring.

Burroughs founded the American Arithmometer Company in 1886.

Komisar is the co-founder of Claris, former CEO of Lucas Arts Entertainment, Chief Financial Officer of GO Corp, and the "virtual CEO" of TiVo.

Teunis Steven Schuurman (born September 1975) is a Dutch technology and media entrepreneur, best known for co-founding and being the first CEO of Elastic, a data search and analytics company listed at the NYSE (ESTC).

In 1990, Atkinson and two others co-founded Apple spin-off General Magic.

Since leaving Apple, Hertzfeld has co-founded three companies: Radius in 1986, General Magic in 1990, and Eazel in 1999.

He is known for his work on the concept of the information economy and for co-founding General Magic, an Apple spin-off that developed an early personal communicator device and intelligent software agents.

He was a founder of Prime Computer, Apollo Computer, and Stellar Computer.

Allen Michels (1941-2024) was an American business executive and founder of Convergent Technologies and The Dana Group.

One of the founders of MIPS Technologies and Atheros, he was the 10th president of Stanford University from 2000 to 2016.

Rowen is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems, Inc in 1984, of Tensilica Inc. in 1997 and of Babblelabs, Inc in 2017.

He is best known for founding Zilog with Federico Faggin and Ungermann-Bass with Charlie Bass.

Andi Gutmans helped to co-create PHP, and co-founded Zend Technologies and is the GM and VP for Data Cloud at Google.

Zeev Suraski (Hebrew: זאב סורסקי pronounced [ze-ev so-raski]) born 18 February 1976, is an Israeli programmer, PHP developer and co-founder of Zend Technologies.

Wang (Chinese: 王嘉廉; pinyin: Wáng Jiālián; August 19, 1944, October 21, 2018) was a Chinese-American billionaire, businessman, and philanthropist, who was a co-founder and CEO of Computer Associates International, Inc. (later renamed CA Technologies).

He co-founded Computer Associates (now CA Technologies) with Charles B.

Chia Network is a company founded by Cohen in 2017 that has implemented a proof-of-space-time cryptocurrency called Chia (XCH).

Ashwin Navin (born c.1977) is an American entrepreneur who is the CEO and co-founder of Samba TV, a data and analytics service that measures television viewership using opt-in data from Internet-connected devices and set-top boxes.

William Redington Hewlett ( HEW-lit; May 20, 1913, January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP).

David Packard ( PAK-ərd; September 7, 1912, March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947-64), CEO (1964-68), and chairman of the board (1964-68, 1972-93) of HP.

With John Mauchly, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures), founded the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC, which incorporated Eckert's

Together, Mauchly and Eckert started the first computer company, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), which allowed them to further the development of fundamental computer concepts originally conceived by members of the 1945-46 ENIAC programming team, notably Jean Bartik and Kay McNulty, including

Russell Noftsker is an American entrepreneur who founded Symbolics, a computer company, and was its first chairman and president.

He is known as the founder of UUNET, which, in the mid and late 1990s, was the world's largest Internet service provider (ISP).

In 1965 Barron left Elliott Automation to become Founder and Managing Director of Computer Technology Limited, where the Modular One range of computer systems was developed.

Bostic and his wife Margo Seltzer founded Sleepycat Software in 1996 to develop and commercialize Berkeley DB, an open-source, key-value database.

He accompanied his father on business trips to Japan in his youth, and after graduating from Heald College founded Gorham Engineering in San Francisco with his father in 1911.

He is the founder or co-founder of multiple aerospace companies

founder of Rocket Lab, an aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider

known as the co-founder of IBX, Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines, X-energy and Quantum Space

Noone co-founded Relativity Space, a company building a 3D printer for rockets, with Tim Ellis in 2015.

He founded the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921

the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of SPAR Aerospace Limited

the co-founder and former CEO of Relativity Space

Red founded and led Carnegie Mellon University's team in the Google Lunar X Prize