G abe Newell, affectionately known as "Gaben" by the gaming community, is an American billionaire and the co-founder and president of the video game developer and digital distribution company, Valve Corporation. A Harvard dropout, he spent 13 years at Microsoft, where he was a key early employee and worked as a producer on the first versions of the Windows operating system. He became a "Microsoft Millionaire" and left the company in 1996 with his colleague, Mike Harrington, to found Valve.

Valve's first product, the video game *Half-Life*, was a massive critical and commercial success that revolutionized the first-person shooter genre. However, the company's most transformative creation was Steam, a digital storefront and platform for PC games. Steam has since become the dominant digital distribution platform for PC gaming, with over 120 million monthly active users, effectively making it the "App Store" for video games. Newell's controlling stake in the highly profitable and privately held company is the source of his immense fortune. He is a revered and iconic figure in the world of video games.