David Cheriton | |
|---|---|
| Born | David Ross Cheriton (1951-03-29)March 29, 1951 (age 74) Vancouver,British Columbia, Canada |
| Education | University of British Columbia (BS) University of Waterloo (MS,PhD) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | SIGCOMM Award for Lifetime Contribution (2003) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science Mathematics Business Philanthropy |
| Institutions | University of British Columbia Stanford University Granite Systems Kealia Arista Networks |
| Website | profiles |
David Ross Cheriton (born March 29, 1951) is a Canadian computer scientist, businessman, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. He is a computer science professor atStanford University,[1][2] where he founded and leads the Distributed Systems Group.[3]
He is adistributed computing andcomputer networking expert, with insight into identifying big market opportunities and building the architectures needed to address such opportunities. He has founded and invested in technology companies, includingGoogle, where he was among the firstangel investors;[4]VMware, where he was an early investor;[5] andArista, where he was cofounder and chief scientist. He has funded at least 20 companies.[6]
As of 2025,Forbes estimated Cheriton's net worth at US$19.8billion[7] whileMaclean's estimates his worth at $18.64 billion.[8] He has made contributions to education, with a $25 million donation to support graduate studies and research in the School of Computer Science (subsequently renamedDavid R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) at theUniversity of Waterloo,[9] a $7.5 million donation to theUniversity of British Columbia,[10] and a $12 million endowment in 2016 to Stanford University to support Computer Science faculty, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate scholarships.[11]
Born inVancouver,British Columbia, Canada, Cheriton attended public schools in theHighlands neighborhood ofEdmonton,Alberta, Canada.[12]
He briefly attended theUniversity of Alberta where he had applied for both mathematics and music. He was rejected by the music program, and then went on to study mathematics and received hisBachelor of Science (B.S.) degree from theUniversity of British Columbia in 1973.[13]
Cheriton received hisMaster of Science (M.S.) andDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in computer science from theUniversity of Waterloo in 1974 and 1978, respectively. He spent three years as an assistant professor at hisalma mater, the University of British Columbia, before moving to Stanford.[14][15]
Cheriton was involved in creating threemicrokerneloperating systems (OSes). He was one of the early principal developers ofThoth, areal-time operating system, and then the Verexkernel. He then founded and led the Distributed Systems Group atStanford University, which developed a microkernel OS namedV. He has published profusely in the areas ofdistributed computing andcomputer networking.[1] He won the prestigious SIGCOMM award in 2003, in recognition for his lifetime contribution to the field oftelecommunications networks.[16] Cheriton was the mentor and advisor of students such as:Sergey Brin andLarry Page (founders of Google),Kenneth Duda[3] (founder of Arista Networks),Hugh Holbrook[3] (VP Software Engineering at Arista Networks),Sandeep Singhal[3] (was GM at Microsoft, now at Google), andKieran Harty[17] (CTO and founder of Tintri).
As of 2016, Cheriton is working with Stanford students ontransactional memory, making memory systems that are resilient to failures.
In-memory processing leads to dramatically faster computers – in some cases speeding up applications by a factor of 100,000. It changes the complete nature of how a business can run. We’re trying to lower the cost and to fit these systems in existing memory structures and reduce the number of components to make them more reliable and more secure.
— David R. Cheriton; 2016 interview[11]
Cheriton cofounded Granite Systems withAndy Bechtolsheim. The company developedgigabit Ethernet products. It was acquired byCisco Systems in 1996.[18]
In August 1998, Stanford studentsSergey Brin andLarry Page met Bechtolsheim on Cheriton's front porch. At the meeting, Bechtolsheim wrote the first cheque to fund their company,Google, and Cheriton joined him as an angel investor with a $200,000 investment.[4]
Cheriton was also an early investor in computevirtualization leaderVMware,[19] which was later acquired for $625M by EMC in 2004. VMware had a successful public offering in 2007.
In 2001 Cheriton and Bechtolsheim founded another start-up company, Palo Alto based Kealia. Kealia designed a high-capacity streaming video server;[20] Galaxy, a range of servers based on AMD'sOpteron microprocessor; and Thumper, an enterprise-gradenetwork attached storage system.[18] Kealia was bought bySun Microsystems in 2004, with Thumper becoming theSun Fire X4500.[18][21]
In 2004, Cheriton cofounded (again with Bechtolsheim) and was chief scientist ofArista Networks, where he worked on the foundations of theExtensible Operating System (EOS).[22] Arista had a successful public offering in 2014.[23]
Cheriton is an investor in and advisory board member for frontline data warehouse companyAster Data Systems,[24] which was acquired byTeradata in 2011 for $263M.[25]
Cheriton is also one of the earliest investors inTintri, a storage virtualization company founded by his studentKieran Harty.[17] Cheriton was also an early investor in in-video advertising companyZunavision,[26] and he foundedOptumSoft.[27]
In 2014, Cheriton cofounded and invested inApstra, Inc.[28] In 2015, he cofounded and invested in BrainofT, Inc. (Caspar).[29]
He currently serves as the Chief Data Center Scientist atJuniper Networks.[30]
Although the Google investment alone would be worth overUS$1 billion, Cheriton has a reputation for a frugal lifestyle, avoiding costly cars or large houses. He was once included in a list of "cheapskate billionaires".[31]
On November 18, 2005, theUniversity of Waterloo announced that Cheriton had donated $25 million to support graduate studies and research in its School of Computer Science. In recognition of his contribution, the school was renamed theDavid R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.[9] In 2009, he donated $2 million to theUniversity of British Columbia, which will go to fund theCarl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI). He more recently donated $7.5M to fund a new chair in computing, and a new course on computational thinking.[10]
Cheriton has also funded two graduate student fellowships and one undergrad fellowship at Stanford,[32] and donated several millions of dollars to Stanford to fund research.[11]
He campaigned againstAsynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) that was favored by telephone carriers, preferringEthernet, which he saw as a simpler, proven option. Ethernet gradually superseded alternatives.[6]
In 1980, Cheriton married Iris Fraser. They divorced in 1994.[33][34]
According to public record, Cheriton has made donations toRepublican causes including the party, candidate PACs, senators, and made a total of over $5,000 in donations to the presidential candidateDonald Trump.[35]
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