Stephen McConnell Case, also known as Steve Case, was born on August 21, 1958, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.), American entrepreneur who cofounded America Online, Inc. (AOL), the world’s foremost Internet service provider (ISP), and negotiated the merger in 2001 of AOL and Time Warner Inc. to create a global media and entertainment conglomerate.
By 2000 Case had built AOL into the world’s largest ISP and engineered AOL’s takeover of rival CompuServe and of the World Wide Web-browser company Netscape Communications Corp. He had also arranged deals that would ensure delivery of AOL services via satellite television, palmtop computers, and wireless telephones. In late 1999 he initiated talks with media and entertainment company Time Warner that in 2001 resulted in the largest merger in corporate history up to that time and signaled the coming of age of the dot-com industry of Internet-related businesses. Case became chairman of the board of the newly created AOL Time Warner Inc., but in 2002 the enterprise reported a record quarterly loss for a U.S. company, $54.24 billion. In 2003 the conglomerate reverted to the name Time Warner Inc., and Case resigned as chairman, though he remained on the board of directors for nearly three more years. In 2005 he cofounded the investment firm Revolution. Case later wrote The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future (2016).
In 1997 Case and his wife, Jean Case, created the Case Foundation, a charitable investment organization. In 2006 the foundation joined various public- and private-sector organizations in a $60 million partnership with the U.S. government to bring clean water to up to 10 million people in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa by 2010. The initiative, however, fell short of its goals.
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