Ken Xie
American billionaire businessman (born 1963)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ken Xie (Chinese: 谢青; pinyin: Xiè Qīng) is a Chinese billionaire businessman who founded Systems Integration Solutions (SIS), NetScreen, and Fortinet.
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Stanford University (MS)
Ken Xie | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Xie in 2021 | |||||||
| Born | 1963 (age 62–63) Beijing, China | ||||||
| Citizenship | American | ||||||
| Education | Tsinghua University (BS, BS) Stanford University (MS) | ||||||
| Known for | Co-founder of Fortinet and NetScreen | ||||||
| Title | CEO and chairman, Fortinet | ||||||
| Children | Jaime Xie | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 謝青 | ||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 谢青 | ||||||
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He is CEO of Fortinet, a cybersecurity firm based in Silicon Valley. Xie was previously the CEO of NetScreen, which was acquired by Juniper Networks for $4 billion in 2004. He built the first ASIC-based firewall/VPN appliance in 1996.[1]
Early life
Xie was born and raised in China.[2] He graduated from Tsinghua University with a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering,[2][3] and from Stanford University with an M.S. in electrical engineering.
Career
In 1993, Xie founded a network security company, Systems Integration Solutions (SIS).[4] Xie built the first ASIC-based firewall/VPN appliance in 1996, in his garage in Palo Alto, California.[1] That same year he founded NetScreen Technologies, an online security firm, with Yan Ke and Feng Deng.[4][5] NetScreen Technologies was later acquired by Juniper Networks Inc. for $4 billion.
Fortinet
In 2000, Xie left NetScreen to create Fortinet with his brother Michael Xie, an electrical engineer.[6] Since then, Ken Xie has served as Fortinet's CEO, while Michael Xie is president and chief technology officer.[6][7] Xie has stated that he founded Fortinet because he believed that security must be embedded in the end-to-end computing and networking infrastructure.[8] The Xie brothers launched the initial FortiGate products in May 2002.[9] Xie has led Fortinet to acquire security monitoring firm AccelOps, endpoint security firm enSilo, SOAR platform provider CyberSponse,[10][11][12] and the IoT-focused security firm Bradford Networks.[13]
In January 2019, Xie was a discussion leader for the Centre for Cybersecurity's cyber workforce session at Davos’ World Economic Forum (WEF) summit.[14] In February 2020, Ken Xie spoke at the RSA conference in San Francisco about the importance of SD-WAN, edge computing, and automation.[15] Xie is a founding member and a member of the board of directors of the Cyber Threat Alliance.[16][17]
Personal life
Xie is married and lives in Los Altos Hills, California.[18] He is the father of Jaime Xie, a fashion influencer and star on the Netflix reality TV series Bling Empire.[19] In September 2020, Xie joined the Forbes 400 list.[20]
Xie was made a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2013.[21]
Private foundation
Xie runs a private foundation, along with his brother. Since 2009, Xie has had more than $30 million in income tax deductions by contributing shares of Fortinet to this private foundation.[22] In 2017, the private foundation spent $3 million on a home in Cupertino, California which Xie and his then-girlfriend lived in.[22] In January 2020, the house was transferred from the foundation to a LLC.