Gabe Newell is an American businessman, the co-founder, and president of the video game developer and digital distribution company, Valve Corporation, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. He was educated at Davis Senior High School and attended Harvard University in the early 1980s before dropping out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first iterations of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Together with Mike Harrington, he left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve. He has a net worth of approximately $4.1 billion.
Valve Corporation has gone on to produce such other popular video games as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Portal and others. In December 2010, Forbes named Newell as “A Name You Should Know”, mostly for his work with Steamworks. In March 2013, Newell was the recipient of the BAFTA Fellowship Award for his outstanding and exceptional creative contribution to the video games industry. That same year, Newell was added to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Forbes listed him among the 100 richest people in the United States in October 2017
