Anthony Wood | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 4, 1965 England |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Texas A&M University (BS) |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | Founder, Chairman and CEO of Roku, Inc. |
| Spouse | Susan Wood |
| Children | 3 |
Anthony J. Wood (born December 4, 1965) is an English-born American billionaire businessman who is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Roku, Inc. [1] [2] [3] In April 2021, he owned 15% stake in Roku, and had a net worth of US$7.2 billion. [4]
Wood was born and grew up in Manchester, England, followed by the State of Georgia in the U.S. [1] At the age of 13, he moved to the Netherlands with family, and then lived in Texas in the U.S. [5]
In 1984, when Wood was a teenager, he published "Lunar Lander" in the Ahoy! magazine. [6] He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University. [7] It was there that Wood met his wife, Susan, who was studying environmental design. [5] The couple has three children, [8] and reside in Palo Alto, California. [9]
While in college, Wood founded his first company, "AW Software", to sell computer programs. He also founded "SunRize Industries" while studying engineering, developing software and hardware for the Amiga. [5] [10] [11] After graduating, he founded "SunRize version 2". Later, in 1995, Wood launched another company, "iBand", which was bought by Macromedia for $36 million. Wood became the vice president of Internet Authoring at Macromedia. [12]
Wood left Macromedia in September 1997 to launch ReplayTV, a digital video recorder (DVR) maker. [13] Wood began working on the DVR development reportedly after being "frustrated" at missing episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. [12] Features introduced by ReplayTV included ad-skipping, rewinding and pausing live television. [14] [15] Wood sold ReplayTV in 2001 to SONICblue Incorporated for US$42 million. [15]
In 2002, Wood founded Roku, Inc., his sixth startup, to market home digital devices. "Roku" means “six” in Japanese. [13] In 2007 Netflix, Inc. employed Wood as the vice president of Netflix's "Internet TV", directly under Reed Hastings. [15] Wood continued to be the CEO of Roku in this period. [2] At Netflix, he built a team which developed a Netflix-streaming player as well as applications allowing PC users to stream Netflix onto their computers. Netflix later spun Wood’s engineering team back out to Roku. [13]
In 2021, Wood and his wife, Susan, donated $48.2 million to create the "WoodNext Foundation", a Texas based philanthropy. [16] Its priorities include mental health, homelessness, scientific and biomedical research, disaster recovery, and economic opportunity with a focus on addressing root causes. [17] Wood made $71 million in charitable commitments in 2022, and appeared on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America’s 50 biggest donors. [18] In 2023, the WoodNext Foundation granted $14.3 million to the University of Pittsburgh for the study of heart disease and dementia, [19] [20] and $1.25 million to establish the BrightEdge Entrepreneurship Fellows Program through the American Cancer Society. [17] . On March 26, 2025, Wood individually contributed $1 million to the Super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority [21] .
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