Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim
	Karim in 2008
Born	October 28, 1979; Merseburg, Bezirk Halle, East Germany; (now Merseburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany)
Education	University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign (BS); Stanford University (MS)
Occupation	Software engineer
Known for	Co-founding YouTube; uploading the first video on YouTube ("Me at the zoo");
YouTube information
Channels	jawed; jawedNOW;
Years active	2005–2007; 2010 (videos); 2018–2019 (Jungle soundscape and Jawed's live stream);
Genre	Educational
Subscribers	6.5 million; 92.5 thousand (jawedNOW);
Views	416 million; None (jawedNOW);
	Last updated: September 4, 2026
Website	jawed.com

Jawed Karim (born October 28, 1979) is a German and American software engineer and internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi descent. He is one of the co-founders of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. The site's inaugural video, "Me at the zoo", uploaded on April 23, 2005, has been viewed over 416 million times as of September 2026. During Karim's time working at PayPal, where he met fellow YouTube co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, he designed many of its core components, including its real-time anti-fraud system.