David Ross Cheriton (born March 29, 1951) is a Canadian computer scientist, businessman, philanthropist, and venture capitalist.
He spent three years as an assistant professor at his alma mater, the University of British Columbia, before moving to Stanford.
[18] In August 1998, Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page met Bechtolsheim on Cheriton's front porch.
At the meeting, Bechtolsheim wrote the first cheque to fund their company, Google, and Cheriton joined him as an angel investor with a $200,000 investment.
[18][21] In 2004, Cheriton cofounded (again with Bechtolsheim) and was chief scientist of Arista Networks, where he worked on the foundations of the Extensible Operating System (EOS).
[25] Cheriton is also one of the earliest investors in Tintri, a storage virtualization company founded by his student Kieran Harty.
[30] Although the Google investment alone would be worth over US$1 billion, Cheriton has a reputation for a frugal lifestyle, avoiding costly cars or large houses.
[31] On November 18, 2005, the University of Waterloo announced that Cheriton had donated $25 million to support graduate studies and research in its School of Computer Science.
[9] In 2009, he donated $2 million to the University of British Columbia, which will go to fund the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI).
[11] He campaigned against Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) that was favored by telephone carriers, preferring Ethernet, which he saw as a simpler, proven option.