Emmett Shear

Emmett Shear is the CEO of Softmax and a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator, based in San Francisco, California. He previously co-founded the live video platform Justin.tv before launching Twitch, where he served as Chief Executive Officer for over a decade until March 2023. Under his leadership, Twitch scaled to support over seven million unique monthly creators and was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. Following his departure from Twitch, Shear briefly served as the interim CEO of OpenAI in November 2023 before co-founding the AI alignment startup Softmax in March 2025. He holds a computer science degree from Yale University and participated in Y Combinator's inaugural 2005 batch with his first startup, Kiko Software. His career focuses on scaling consumer internet platforms, advising early-stage technology ventures, and advancing artificial intelligence alignment.