Mike Schroepfer
Schroepfer in 2010
Alma materStanford University
OccupationCTO at Meta Platforms (2013–2022)
Known forClimate Investment and Philanthropy

Mike Schroepfer is an entrepreneur, technical architect, climate investor, and philanthropist who was the chief technology officer (CTO) at Meta Platforms between March 2013[1] and March 2022.[2] In 2022 he took a step back and transitioned to become Senior Fellow at Meta to focus on investing and philanthropic work related to addressing the climate crisis.[3] Schroepfer's current focus is investing in tech and science to fight climate change through his VC firm Gigascale Capital, philanthropic entity Additional Ventures, and as board chair of the Carbon to Sea Initiative.

Education

Schroepfer attended Spanish River Community High School in Palm Beach County, Florida, graduating in 1993. He holds a bachelor's degree (1997) and a master's degree (1999) in computer science from Stanford University.[4]

Career

He was an engineer at computer software company Puffin Designs from October 1997 to November 1999, when he became a partner in Reactivity, Inc., a computer software consulting practice.[5]

Schroepfer founded the computer software company CenterRun in June 2000, becoming its chief architect and director of engineering. CenterRun was acquired by Sun Microsystems in November 2003. After the takeover, he became the chief technology officer for Sun's data center automation division ("N1").[5][6] Schroepfer was the vice president of engineering at Mozilla Corporation from July 2005 to August 2008,[5] where he led the development of the Firefox web browser.[5][6][7]

He became director of engineering at Facebook in July 2008.[6][7] In 2008 he was listed as number 20 in the 25 Most Influential People in Mobile Technology by Laptopmag.com.[8] In 2010 Fortune listed him and two colleagues at Facebook's technical branch as joint number 27 in their list of the 40 under 40.[9] Schroepfer has been known for his work on artificial intelligence at Facebook. Particularly, he gained attention amid the social media network's attempt to address the proliferation of false, misleading, and inappropriate content within the platform.[10] It was reported that Mark Zuckerberg believes that Facebook can address the problem through its proprietary AI technology,[10] which initially focused on greater facial recognition capability and better ad targeting.[11] According to Schroepfer, Facebook's AI succeeded at certain types of content moderation.[12] For example, its image classifier algorithms can automatically identify and delete photos and videos that contain nudity.[12]

Schroepfer became a member of the board of directors for Investment Management firm, Wealthfront, announced on November 16, 2015.[13]

Schroepfer co-founded Additional Ventures with wife Erin Hoffman as "a purpose-driven organization leveraging evidence-based research and deep subject matter expertise to make an outsized impact."[14] The non-profit make grants in service of its mission to shape a healthier, more equitable world with a focus on Biomedical Research, Climate Action, and Community & Democracy.

On 23 September 2021, Mike Schroepfer announced that he would be stepping down from the role of CTO at Facebook in 2022. [15] He transitioned to become Senior Fellow at Meta, focusing on artificial intelligence and the development of technical talent, and pursuing climate investment and advocacy in his personal time.

On 2 May 2023, Schroepfer launched a new climate investment firm called Gigascale Capital.[16] Gigascale Capital invests in early-stage companies solving the climate crisis, and is built around the belief that tech and entrepreneurship can create climate-friendly options that are better than the high carbon incumbents.[17]

In June 2023, Schroepfer announced that Additional Ventures had created and spun out a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating research into ocean alkalinity enhancement called the Carbon to Sea Initiative.[18] He currently serves as board chair of the Carbon to Sea Initiative, which has raised over $50 million to back research and development into exploring the potential to accelerate carbon dioxide absorption into the ocean.[19]

Schroepfer currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.[4][5]


See also

References

  1. ↑ Geron, Tomio. "Facebook Names Mike Schroepfer CTO". Forbes.com. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  2. ↑ "Facebook Names New CTO".
  3. ↑ Clifford, Cat. "Climate Reporter". CNBC. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  4. 1 2 "Mike Schroepfer, Facebook VP of Engineering". Science Gallery. Trinity College, Dublin. 2010-11-15. Retrieved 2011-01-09.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Mike Schroepfer". Linkedin. Retrieved 2011-01-09.
  6. 1 2 3 "'Vice President of Engineering at Facebook". Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. 2008.
  7. 1 2 Claburn, Thomas (July 28, 2008). "Facebook Hires Mozilla Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer". InformationWeek. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  8. ↑ LAPTOP Staff (May 27, 2008). "Mike Schroepfer - 25 Most Influential People in Mobile Technology". Laptopmag.com. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  9. ↑ Staff (2010). "40 Under 40 2010". Fortune magazine. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  10. 1 2 Metz, Cade; Isaac, Mike (2019-05-17). "Facebook's A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-05-21.
  11. ↑ Kraus, Rachel (17 May 2019). "Don't feel bad for Facebook's CTO". Mashable. Retrieved 2019-05-21.
  12. 1 2 The New York Times Editorial Staff (2019). Artificial Intelligence. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. p. 47. ISBN 9781642821376.
  13. ↑ "Facebook's CTO Mike Schroepfer joins Wealthfront's Board of Directors". VentureBeat. 16 November 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  14. ↑ "About Us". Additional Ventures.
  15. ↑ "Facebook's CTO to step down after 13 years at the company". TechCrunch. 22 September 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
  16. ↑ Clifford, Cat. "Former Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer launches climate investment firm: 'We need business' to solve climate change". CNBC.
  17. ↑ "Introducing Gigascale, a new kind of climate tech investment firm". LinkedIn.
  18. ↑ Temple, James (June 6, 2023). "Meta's former CTO has a new $50 million project: ocean-based carbon removal". MIT Tech Review. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  19. ↑ Geman, Ben (June 7, 2023). "New effort unveiled to speed ocean CO2 removal". Axios.
  • Mike Schroepfer interview at TransformX 2022. Schroepfer sat down with Scale AI Founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to share lessons from Facebook’s transition from being web-focused to becoming mobile-focused and, ultimately, an AI-centric company.
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