Emmett Shear
Twitch
Live video-streaming platform, primarily for gaming · San Francisco, California
Portrait: Web Summit / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
The founder
Emmett Shear co-founded Justin.tv in 2007 with Justin Kan, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt; its gaming-focused offshoot, Twitch, launched in 2011 and quickly eclipsed the parent site. As Twitch’s CEO, Shear grew it into the dominant platform for game-streaming and esports. He led Twitch for roughly 16 years total, including a brief stint as interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023, before stepping down from Twitch in 2023.
How it was sold
Amazon beat out a competing offer reportedly from Google/YouTube at a similar price to acquire Twitch for $970 million in cash, announced August 25, 2014 — Amazon’s largest acquisition to that point. Twitch continued operating as an independent brand under Amazon, which saw the deal as its way into livestreaming and gaming culture.
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In the news
Coverage of the Twitch deal from independent outlets — read the original reporting, not just our summary.
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