He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).

Subsequently, he studied at MIT as both an undergraduate and graduate student in Architecture where his research focused on issues of computer-aided design.

For several years thereafter he divided his teaching time between MIT and several visiting professorships at Yale, Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley.

He also during 1966, had a role with IBM which could potentially provide funding for research to find means of using computers to help architects, planners and designers.

[5] In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT's Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which studied new approaches to human–computer interaction.

[11] However, critics such as Cass Sunstein[12] have criticised his techno-utopian ideas for failing to consider the historical, political and cultural realities with which new technologies should be viewed.

The project was a part of a broader program by One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit organization started by Negroponte and other Media Lab faculty to extend Internet access in developing countries.

Negroponte is an angel investor and has invested in over 30 startup companies over the last 30 years, including Zagats, Wired, Ambient Devices, Skype and Velti.

In August 2007, he was appointed to a five-member special committee with the objective of assuring the continued journalistic and editorial integrity and independence of the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones & Company publications and services.

[17] Negroponte's fellow founding committee members are Louis Boccardi, Thomas Bray, Jack Fuller, and the late former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn.