Leif K-Brooks Has Shut Down Omegle After 14 Years — Details on His Net Worth

The Gist:

• We break down the net worth of Leif K-Brooks.
• The programmer founded Omegle back in 2009.
• He has since dissolved the company and shuttered the site.

The internet can be a scary place with all sorts of scary figures lurking around the corner. But few places embody that darkness in its totality quite like Omegle. Having first launched in 2009, the online chat platform connected users to each other completely randomly in video-enabled anonymous chatrooms. While it most certainly provided hours of entertainment for adolescents looking to clown on someone random, it was also an explicit gateway for online predators to harass just about anyone.

The online chat service was no stranger to controversy throughout its history, but the platform remained active and popular for over 14 years.

In November 2023, Omegle was officially dissolved and shuttered by its creator, Leif K-Brooks, who made a lengthy statement regarding its defunct status.

What kind of net worth has he amassed since Omegle first launched? Here's what we managed to dig up.

Leif first created Omegle when he was just 18 years old. He launched the chat platform on March 25, 2009, and within a month, it garnered a daily average of over 150,000 users online. Its infamous video call function was added a year later in March 2010. It attained even more popularity with teenagers during the COVID-19 lockdowns, but no age restrictions were placed on it until 2022, which meant that minors were potentially subject to predatory behavior while on the site.

As for Leif, he seems to be a bit of a one-hit wonder. As far as his LinkedIn profile states, he has only ever worked as Omegle's founder and CEO throughout the platform's lifespan.

As such, the details on his net worth are a bit sketchy. Many outlets claim that Leif's net worth is as high as $5 million. If this is true, it's likely that he generated much of this from profits on Omegle. Although the online chat service was free to use, it reportedly made money off of ads and sponsored chats, according to Zippia.

While Omegle might have been Leif's big break, it has become a source of stress and controversy over the years. It's for those reasons that he decided to pull the plug on the whole thing. On Nov. 9, 2023, Leif shut down Omegle. Going to the site right now leads directly to his public statement on its closure. As part of Omegle's departure, Leif wrote that while he always intended for Omegle to be a safe place, fighting its misuse has proven to be difficult.

"Thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes and to everyone who contributed to the site's success in any way," Leif wrote. "I'm so sorry I couldn't keep fighting for you."

As of this writing, it is currently unknown what Leif plans to do in the future.