Max Levchin

Max Levchin is a computer scientist and entrepreneur widely known as co-founder (with Peter Thiel) and former CTO of PayPal.

Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997 and co-founded two companies that made Internet-tools, NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media. PayPal was founded in 1998, and went public in February 2002.

He is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts [1] and is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a Captcha.