Gabe Newell dropped out of Harvard University to work at the fledgling company then Microsoft. After making large amounts of money from developing on the Windows platform, he left Microsoft to start his own company-van software. Van and are among the biggest companies in the industry to digital distribution and is one of the fastest growing, with their steam platform see year on year growth of 100 percent for four years.

Gabe is married and has two sons. His hobbies include metalwork and collect knives.