Evan Spiegel

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Lore & Background

Evan Spiegel was born in Los Angeles, California, to lawyers John W. Spiegel and Melissa Ann Thomas. He grew up in Pacific Palisades, California, where he was raised Episcopalian. He attended the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica and later Stanford University. While in high school, he took design classes at the Otis College of Art and Design, and the summer before Stanford, he studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He also had an unpaid internship in sales at Red Bull. As a student, he worked as a paid intern for a biomedical company, as a careers instructor in Cape Town, South Africa, and at Intuit on the TxtWeb project. Spiegel is a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In April 2011, Spiegel proposed an app with ephemeral messaging as a product design class project. Later that year, he worked with fellow Stanford classmates Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown to launch a prototype called 'Picaboo,' later renamed Snapchat. In 2012, Spiegel left Stanford shortly before completing his degree to focus on Snapchat. By the end of 2012, the app had reached 1 million daily active users. He later completed his remaining credits and graduated in 2018. Time magazine named Spiegel one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014 and 2017. In February 2017, Spiegel and Murphy pledged to donate upwards of 13,000,000 shares of Class A common stock over the next 15–20 years to an arts, education, and youth non-profit, creating the Snap Foundation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they donated $3 million to people affected by the pandemic. In January 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that after the predicted March 2017 IPO, Spiegel and Murphy would hold over 70% of the voting power and own around 45% of the total stock. Spiegel joined the board of directors of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 2021. Spiegel began dating Australian model Miranda Kerr in 2015. They became engaged on July 20, 2016, and married in a private ceremony in Los Angeles on May 27, 2017. Spiegel has three sons with Kerr and a stepson from Kerr's previous marriage to Orlando Bloom. In 2018, Spiegel and his son Hart received French citizenship through a clause in naturalization laws waiving residency requirements for applicants contributing to French culture or economy. In November 2022, he joined the board of directors for Gagosian Gallery. In 2014, leaked emails from his Stanford days included misogynistic and homophobic comments; Spiegel later apologized, stating they did not reflect who he is today.

Reader's Guide

Evan Spiegel's significance stems from his role as co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat. He proposed the ephemeral messaging app as a class project in April 2011, then launched it with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown as 'Picaboo.' By the end of 2012, Snapchat had 1 million daily active users. Spiegel left Stanford in 2012 to focus on the app, later graduating in 2018. He became the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015 and, at age 26, one of the youngest public company CEOs when Snap began trading in March 2017. His net worth fluctuated from $13.8 billion in 2021 (ranked 55 on the Forbes 400) to $2.5 billion as of August 2025. Spiegel's philanthropic work includes the Snap Foundation, a $3 million COVID-19 donation, a $20 million gift to Stockton Scholars in 2018, and paying off the 2022 graduating class's student debt at Otis College of Art and Design. He also faced controversy: in 2014, Gawker leaked emails from his fraternity days containing misogynistic and homophobic comments, for which he apologized. Spiegel is a Francophile who learned French and received French citizenship in 2018. He serves on the boards of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (since 2021) and Gagosian Gallery (since November 2022), and is a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and its board of directors.

Did You Know?

• Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015.
• He and his son Hart received French citizenship in 2018 through a clause waiving residency requirements for contributors to French culture or economy.
• Spiegel and Miranda Kerr paid off the entire 2022 graduating class's student debt at Otis College of Art and Design.
• In February 2017, Spiegel and Bobby Murphy pledged to donate upwards of 13,000,000 shares of Class A common stock to create the Snap Foundation.
• Spiegel joined the board of directors of investment management company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 2021.