Founder & CEO at Social Capital · Joined 2011
View Live Interactive Profile →Chamath Palihapitiya emigrated from Sri Lanka to Canada as a child, growing up in poverty before earning an electrical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. He became the youngest Vice President in AOL's history, briefly worked as an investor at Mayfield, then joined Facebook in 2007, leading its Growth, Platform, and Mobile teams as the company scaled past a billion users. He left in 2011 to found Social Capital with $60 million of his own capital, backing Slack, Box, Yammer, and Virgin Galactic through its early years as a traditional venture fund. In 2018 he restructured the firm entirely, closing it to outside capital and becoming its sole investing partner - a 'technology Berkshire Hathaway' model funded by his own balance sheet, which he reported at $2.147 billion in his 2025 annual letter. Palihapitiya became one of the most prominent faces of the 2020-2021 SPAC boom, earned the nickname 'SPAC King,' co-hosts the widely-followed All-In Podcast, and was formerly a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors before selling his stake in 2022 for roughly $520 million.