Brewster Kahle

Speaker at the St. Gallen Symposium

Brewster Kahle is the Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996. The Internet Archive is one of the world’s largest digital libraries, serving over one million users each day and working with more than 1,400 library and university partners worldwide to provide free public access to knowledge. In his role, he oversees policy, strategic direction, and technological innovation, including the launch of the Wayback Machine, the only public archive of the web. Prior to founding the Internet Archive, he helped pioneer the early internet by creating the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), co-founding Alexa Internet (later acquired by Amazon), and contributing to early supercomputing ventures. Beyond his organizational leadership, he is a prolific writer and global advocate for technology grounded in privacy, security, and accessibility. Brewster Kahle studied artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds an honorary Doctor of Computer Science.