YouTube founders’ 2006 payout looks smaller beside a $550 billion estimate
Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006; analysts later valued the video platform at about $550 billion, according to Variety.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Google’s 2006 purchase of YouTube turned the video site’s founders into very wealthy men, but later estimates show how much the platform grew after the deal. The $1.65 billion acquisition has become a case study in the trade-off founders face between taking an early exit and holding out for a much larger future business.
The New York Times reported at the time that Google agreed to buy YouTube in stock in the fall of 2006. YouTube was then best known as a fast-growing place to upload and watch online video, long before it became a core entertainment and advertising platform.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings cited by The New York Times later showed how the payout was divided among the company’s cofounders. Chad Hurley, YouTube’s chief executive, received Google shares worth about $345 million, while Steven Chen, the company’s chief technology officer, received shares worth about $326 million.
Jawed Karim, who had left the startup earlier to return to school, received stock worth about $64 million, according to The New York Times. The sale gave the founding team a large payday less than two years after YouTube’s launch.
A platform that kept growing
Years later, analysts placed YouTube’s value far above the price Google paid. Variety reported in 2025 that a MoffettNathanson research note estimated YouTube was worth about $550 billion.
That figure would be roughly 333 times the 2006 sale price, before adjusting for inflation. Fortune reported that, if Hurley and Chen had received the same share of a sale at that estimated valuation as they did in 2006, each could have collected more than $100 billion.
YouTube’s business has also become larger than many standalone media companies. Variety reported that YouTube generated $54.2 billion in revenue in 2024 and more than $60 billion in 2025, putting it ahead of Netflix by that measure.
The company’s growth followed early strains that Google was better positioned to absorb. ABC News reported on YouTube’s operating losses in its earlier years, while The Wall Street Journal reported on copyright lawsuits tied to the platform’s user-uploaded videos.
YouTube later became a foundation of the creator economy, helping turn online video personalities into major businesses. Fortune cited MrBeast as one example of a creator whose career was built through the platform.
The founder’s dilemma
The YouTube sale is one of several examples of founders selling before later growth lifted the value of their former companies. Fortune reported that Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake shortly after Apple was formed, receiving $800 and later $1,500 to give up future claims.
Fortune reported that Wayne’s former stake could now be worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, based on Apple’s later market value. In another example outside technology, Fortune reported that Chef Boyardee’s founder sold the company in 1946 for $6 million; the brand was later sold to private equity in 2025 for $600 million.
Those comparisons do not prove the companies would have reached the same scale without new owners. They show the hard calculation behind early sales: founders can lock in life-changing money, but the buyer may capture most of the upside if the business becomes much larger.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.