Jon S. von Tetzchner

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner (Reykjavik, August 29, 1967) is an Icelandic programmer and businessman. He is the current co-founder and CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, the company that develops the Vivaldi web browser among other services. Tetzchner was previously the co-founder and CEO of Opera Software until 2011, when he left the company.

Opera Software

Stephenson has a degree in computer science from the University of Oslo, Norway. Together with Geir Ivarsøy he was part of a research group at the Norwegian state telephone company (now known as Telenor ) in which they developed the navigation software called MultiTorg Opera. After Telenor abandoned the project, Geir and Jon obtained the rights to the software and founded their own company, where they continued the work. Now known as Opera, this Internet browser has become very popular, despite the competition. Opera Software has grown to nearly 200 employees since it first moved into its current offices in Oslo, Norway.

On Thursday, April 21, 2005, he proclaimed that if the number of downloads of the new version of his browser (Opera 8) reached one million in four days, he would swim across the Atlantic Ocean from Norway to the United States. The million mark was reached, and Opera Software announced that von Tetzchner would keep his word. On April 25 and 26, Opera's official website described the "attempt" unserious about crossing the Atlantic and his quick and comical 'failure'.

Vivaldi Technologies

In December 2013, Tetzchner founded the company Vivaldi Technologies and launched the online community site vivaldi.net. Vivaldi.net includes a forum, blogs, chat, photos, and a free email service called Vivaldi Mail. On January 27, 2015, Vivaldi Technologies announced the release of its new Vivaldi web browser. Its version 1.0 came out in April 2016.