# Emmet Shear

Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor, best known as co-founder of Justin.tv and Twitch, where he served as CEO until 2023. He briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023 and later co-founded the AI alignment startup Softmax in 2025.

Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded the live video platform Justin.tv and became chief executive officer of Twitch when it was spun off from Justin.tv, a position he held until March 2023. In November 2023, he was briefly the interim CEO of [OpenAI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/openai). He is the CEO of the AI alignment startup Softmax.

## Early life and education

Shear grew up in Seattle, Washington, where he attended the Evergreen School for Gifted Children and the Transition School at the University of Washington. There, at age eight, he met his eventual co-founder Justin Kan; the two bonded over accelerated math classes and playing Magic: The Gathering. Shear studied computer science at Yale University, graduating in 2005 alongside his future Twitch co-founders Justin Kan and Michael Seibel.

## Career

### Y Combinator and Kiko

In 2005, Shear and Kan were part of the first class of [Y Combinator](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/y-combinator). As part of the program, they built a calendar application called Kiko. After Google Calendar was introduced, they sold Kiko on eBay for around $250,000.

### Justin.tv and Twitch

In March 2007, Shear, Kan, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt launched Justin.tv, a 24/7 live video feed of Kan's life broadcast via a webcam attached to his head. The site quickly gained media coverage. In October 2007, it added the ability for other users to host their own broadcasts. By 2010, the platform had secured $7.2 million in venture capital funding and reported approximately 31 million unique monthly visitors.

Justin.tv developed subject-specific content categories, including Gaming, which grew rapidly and became the most popular content. In June 2011, the company spun off gaming content under a separate brand, TwitchTV, inspired by the term "twitch gameplay." On August 29, 2011, Shear became CEO of Justin.tv, remaining in that role as the company rebranded around Twitch in 2014. On August 25, 2014, [Amazon](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/amazon-web-services) acquired Twitch for a reported $970 million. Shear resigned as CEO in March 2023, with Daniel J. Clancy taking over.

### Investor activities

In June 2011, Shear became a part-time partner at Y Combinator, advising new startups in each batch.

### OpenAI interim CEO

On November 19, 2023, Shear was named interim CEO of OpenAI, following the board's removal of Sam Altman two days earlier. On November 21, an agreement reinstated Altman as CEO. Shear had reportedly threatened to resign if the board could not provide evidence supporting Altman's removal. He has publicly stated concerns about AI's impact on civilization, estimating his "P(Doom)" - the subjective probability of an existential catastrophe from AI such as human extinction - as between 5 and 50 percent.

### Softmax

In March 2025, Shear co-founded Softmax, a startup focused on [AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) alignment, alongside Adam Goldstein and David Bloomin.

## Philanthropy

In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Shear donated an initial $1 million via Twitch to start SF New Deal, a non-profit that ordered meals from San Francisco eateries and delivered them to people in need. The organization was started by his Yale classmate Leonore Estrada, owner of Three Babes Bakeshop in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood.

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/emmet-shear
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-13T03:50:35.644223+00:00