| Ken Xie | |
| Birth Place: | Beijing, China |
| Citizenship: | American |
| Known For: | Co-founder of Fortinet and NetScreen |
| Education: | Tsinghua University Stanford University |
| CEO and chairman, Fortinet | |
| Children: | Jaime Xie |
Ken Xie is an American billionaire businessman who founded Systems Integration Solutions (SIS), NetScreen, and Fortinet.
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.
Xie was born and raised in China.[1] He graduated from Tsinghua University with a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering,[1] [2] and from Stanford University with an M.S. in electrical engineering.
In 1993, Xie founded a network security company, Systems Integration Solutions (SIS).[3] Xie built the first ASIC-based firewall/VPN appliance in 1996, in his garage in Palo Alto, California.[4] That same year he founded NetScreen Technologies, an online security firm, with Yan Ke and Feng Deng.[5] NetScreen Technologies was later acquired by Juniper Networks Inc. for $4 billion.
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.[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]
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]
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. In January 2020, the house was transferred from the foundation to a LLC.