Founder Profile
Ken Xie
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Ken Xie?
Ken Xie is a founder of Fortinet, Inc., which was founded in 2000 with Michael Xie.
- Company founded
- Fortinet, Inc.
- Founded
- 2000
- Co-founders
- Michael Xie
Background
Electrical engineer and serial security entrepreneur who co-founded NetScreen Technologies, an early hardware-accelerated firewall vendor acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004, before starting Fortinet.
Founding Story
Ken Xie co-founded Fortinet in 2000 with his brother Michael and has led it as Chairman and CEO since. Before Fortinet he co-founded NetScreen Technologies, a hardware-accelerated firewall company that Juniper Networks acquired in 2004 for about $4 billion. At Fortinet he pushed the idea of unified threat management: one appliance, accelerated by custom chips, handling firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention and VPN. He took the company public in 2009 and still owns about 9% of its shares, according to Bloomberg citing an April 2026 filing.
Ken Xie was born in 1963 in Beijing. Education: Tsinghua University; Stanford University.