Bret Taylor

Bret Steven Taylor (born 1980) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He led the team that co-created Google Maps, was the chief technology officer (CTO) of Facebook (now Meta Platforms), chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk, and co-CEO of Salesforce (alongside cofounder Marc Benioff). Taylor was also one of the founders of FriendFeed and the creator of collaborative productivity software Quip. Taylor is the cofounder of AI startup Sierra, the chairman of OpenAI, and a board member of Shopify. Bret Taylor was born in Oakland, California, in 1980, primarily growing up in the East Bay. He graduated from Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, in 1998. Taylor attended Stanford University, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in 2002 and 2003,.[2] His parents and older sister also attended Stanford.[2] In 2003, Taylor was hired by Marissa Mayer as an associate product manager intern at Google.[3] He led the team working on features such as Search by Location and Google Local, which were predecessors to Google Maps.[4][5] Taylor left Google in June 2007 to join venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he and several former Google employees founded the social network web site FriendFeed.[6][7] Taylor was CEO until August 2009, when it was acquired by Facebook Inc. (now known as Meta Platforms) for an estimated $50 million.[8] The acquisition led to Facebook adopting the "Like" button from FriendFeed.[9] After the acquisition, Taylor joined Facebook and became CTO in 2010.[10][11]