Gabe Logan Newell is an American businessman and the co-founder and president of the video game developer and digital distribution company Valve. Newell was educated at Davis Senior High School in Davis, California, and attended Harvard University in the early 1980s. He dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first iterations of the Windows operating system. Along with Mike Harrington, Newell left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve; Harrington left Valve in 2000. Newell led development of Valve's digital distribution service Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011. He is one of the wealthiest people in the United States; in December 2021, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$3.9 billion.