Christopher W. Klaus (born 1973 in

Sarasota Sarasota () is a city in and the county seat of Sarasota County, Florida, United States. It is located in Southwest Florida, the southern end of the Tampa Bay area, and north of Fort Myers and Punta Gorda. Its official limits include Sarasota Ba ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

) is an American technology entrepreneur. He was founder and CTO of Internet Security Systems (ISS), a company which he started in the early 1990s, and then sold to

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

in 2006 for $1.3B. He also holds the honor of being the namesake of the

Klaus Advanced Computing Building The Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building is a three-story academic building at the Georgia Institute of Technology that houses a portion of its Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, College of Computing, Georgia Institut ...

at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

History

Klaus formed ISS in the early 1990s as a student at the

, eventually dropping out to focus on the growing company. In 2004 he stepped down from his role of Chief Technology Officer of ISS to pursue other interests, although he remained a significant shareholder and retained his role as the company's Chief Security Advisor. In 2006 ISS was sold to

for $1.3B. Around 2007 Klaus became one of Georgia Tech's most visible contributors, giving a $15M naming gift to build the College of Computing's new home, the

. In July 2014, Klaus co-founded NeuroLaunch, a

business accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components, and (sometimes) culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubato ...

focused towards neurotech companies in Atlanta. In October 2015, he financed and co-founded another accelerator, CyberLaunch, which focuses on

cybersecurity Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and networks from thr ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

startups. During 2016 he was the CEO of Kaneva, a game company which he founded in 2004, and also the main financier for multiple business accelerators in the Atlanta area; including being a part of the Atlanta Technology Angels. In Spring of 2024 Klaus was supposed to deliver the commencement speech for the Class of 2024 students at the

obtaining their Bachelors from the College of Computing and Masters from the College of Engineering. However, he was unable to attend due to the passing of his son, Will, and had his friend Karl Dasher give the address instead. Klaus gave the commencement address the following year, telling his entrepreneurship story and receiving an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

from the Institute presented by President Ángel Cabrera. He concluded his speech by remembering his son, Will, and gifting all graduating students of the Class of 2025 the opportunity to incorporate a Delaware C Corporation at his expense in Will's honor.

References

Living people 1973 births Georgia Tech alumni Chief technology officers of computer security companies American chief technology officers American technology chief executives People from Sarasota, Florida {{US-compu-bio-stub