YouTube’s founders split over $650 million when they sold to Google in 2006—had they held out, they could have taken a slice of $550 billion

YouTube’s cofounders could all be part of the billionaire club alongside Google's Sundar Pichai had they kept the business: It’s grown some 333x since they cashed out.

• YouTube sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, with cofounders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen splitting over $650 million worth of stock shares. And while their wealth increased exponentially with the acquisition, estimates put today’s value of YouTube at $550 billion—a 333x increase. Few could imagine YouTube’s eventual media dominance at the time, making it a classic example of the high-stakes decisions founders must weigh. 

YouTube may have started as a site to share home videos, but now it’s one of the most powerful platforms in the world: From entertainment to advertising, it’s spawned billion-dollar careers and birthed a global creator economy, turning individuals like MrBeast into household names.

But when its founders sold the popular video platform to Google for $1.65 billion in fall 2006, not even they could have predicted just how massive it would become—or how much more they could have made.

At the time of sale, each cofounder—Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim—received millions of dollars worth of stock: Hurley, YouTube’s CEO at the time, received shares worth some $345 million by the time the Securities and Exchange Commission documents were released a few months later, according to The New York Times. Chen, its CTO, received some $326 million worth and Jawed Karim, who left the venture early to go back to school, got $64 million worth.

“This is great,” Hurley said in a video posted when the sale was announced. “Two kings have gotten together. The king of search, the king of video have gotten together. We’re going to have it our way.”

YouTube’s sale price to Google is just a fraction of its estimated $550 billion value today, according to a MoffettNathanson research note reported by Variety in 2025. That’s a 333x increase (unadjusted for inflation) from nearly two decades prior. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, had Hurley and Chen received the same percentage of the sale today as they did in 2006, each could have walked away with more than $100 billion each.

Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to selling

In 2024, YouTube brought in $54.2 billion in revenue, and in 2025, it topped $60 billion, Variety reported—making the platform bigger than the entirety of Netflix. YouTube’s record-setting successes highlight how Google was able to overcome issues that the video platform’s founders struggled with early on—including operating losses and copyright lawsuits—and its paid off dividends.

But YouTube’s masterminds are far from the only business leaders that have seen their company soar after exchanging ownership.

During the first two weeks of Apple’s existence, the company’s lesser-known third cofounder Ronald Wayne checked out and sold his 10% stake—netting him $800 at the time, plus $1,500 to forfeit any claim to the company for good. However, his 10% share could now be worth between $75 billion and $300 billion, thanks to the company’s now $4.3 trillion market cap.

These stories also exist outside of tech. For example, the founder of iconic pasta brand Chef Boyardee sold the company in 1946 for $6 million. Over the decades, the company exponentially grew its operations, expanding to multiple lines of canned and microwavable goods. And in 2025, the brand, including its over 500-person strong factory, was sold to private equity for $600 million—a 10,000% increase in value.

And in the case of Chef Boyardee and YouTube, it’s unclear whether such massive growth would have been achieved without the backing of larger corporate owners. For the founders, it means weighing up selling early and leaving future billions on the table—or holding on and risking the company never reaching its full potential.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on July 25, 2025.

More on wealth

• Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne—whose stake would be worth up to $400 billion had he not sold it in 1976—says that at 91, he has no regrets
• Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
• Apple’s Steve Wozniak says he cofounded the tech giant after 5 rejections from HP—not to ‘make money.’ For years, his paycheck was just $50
  

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com