C hristopher Stolte is an American software engineer and a co-founder of Tableau Software, the company that pioneered self-service data visualization. The idea for Tableau originated from a computer science project at Stanford University, where Stolte was a PhD student working under his advisor, Professor Pat Hanrahan. They, along with Christian Chabot, co-founded the company in 2003 to commercialize their breakthrough research.

Stolte was the technical visionary behind Tableau's core technology, known as VizQL (Visual Query Language), which translated drag-and-drop actions into database queries, allowing users to create complex data visualizations without needing to write code. As the company's Chief Development Officer, he led the engineering team that built Tableau into an industry-leading product beloved by millions of users. The company's 2013 IPO and its eventual $15.7 billion acquisition by Salesforce in 2019 made him a billionaire.