People from United States

Tim Cook

Apple executive chairman and its CEO from 2011 to 2026

Born 1960

Thomas J. Watson

Salesman who built IBM into a business-machine giant

1874 – 1956

Ted Hoff

Intel engineer who conceived the architecture of the first microprocessor

Born 1937

Steve Wozniak

Engineer who designed the Apple I and Apple II and co-founded Apple

Born 1950

Steve Case

Co-founder of AOL who brought millions of Americans online

Born 1958

Sheryl Sandberg

Former Facebook COO and author of Lean In

Born 1969

Sebastian Thrun

German-American roboticist who led Google’s self-driving car project and founded Udacity

Born 1967

Sean Parker

Napster co-founder and Facebook’s first president

Born 1979

Samuel Morse

Painter turned inventor who developed the electric telegraph and Morse code

1791 – 1872

Robert Moog

Inventor of the Moog synthesizer

1934 – 2005

Richard Stallman

Founder of the free software movement and the GNU Project

Born 1953

Reshma Saujani

Founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First

Born 1975

Reid Hoffman

Co-founder of LinkedIn and influential Silicon Valley investor

Born 1967

Ray Tomlinson

Programmer who sent the first networked email and chose the @ sign

1941 – 2016

Raj Reddy

Indian-American AI pioneer and the first Asian-born winner of the Turing Award

Born 1937

Philo Farnsworth

Farm boy who invented the first fully electronic television system

1906 – 1971

Phil Zimmermann

Creator of PGP, the first widely available strong email encryption

Born 1954

Peter Thiel

PayPal co-founder, Palantir co-founder and first outside investor in Facebook

Born 1967

Palmer Luckey

Inventor of the Oculus Rift and founder of the defence company Anduril

Born 1992

Naval Ravikant

Indian-born co-founder of AngelList and popular voice on wealth and happiness

Born 1974

Nathan Blecharczyk

Engineer who co-founded Airbnb and built its first website

Moxie Marlinspike

Cryptographer who created the Signal messaging app and protocol

Mitch Kapor

Founder of Lotus and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Born 1950

Michael Stonebraker

Database researcher behind Ingres and Postgres

Born 1943