Who Owns TED?

Architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman and broadcast designer Harry Marks staged the first TED conference in Monterey, California, in 1984. The name stood for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The inaugural event featured demonstrations of the compact disc, the Apple Macintosh computer, and 3D graphics from Lucasfilm. It lost money, and Wurman did not hold a second conference until 1990.

Through the 1990s TED became a coveted invitation-only gathering in Monterey, drawing figures such as Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Jane Goodall. Wurman ran the conference as a personal project with a deliberately eclectic speaker mix and an 18-minute talk format that became the event's signature.

Chris Anderson, a British media entrepreneur who had built and sold a magazine and online publishing business, attended TED in the late 1990s. He negotiated with Wurman in 2000, and in 2001 his nonprofit Sapling Foundation acquired the conference. Anderson became TED's curator and later its public face, a role he held for 25 years.

The pivotal decision came in 2006, when TED began posting selected talks online for free. The videos found a global audience far beyond the roughly 1,500 attendees at the annual conference. TED Talks accumulated billions of views, and the brand became synonymous with short-form idea-driven public speaking. TED shifted its tagline to Ideas Worth Spreading, later updated to Ideas Change Everything for the organization's 40th anniversary in 2024.

TED expanded well beyond the flagship conference. TEDx launched in 2009 as a free licensing program that lets independent organizers run local events; tens of thousands of TEDx events have been held worldwide. TED-Ed produces animated lessons for students. The TED Fellows program supports young innovators, and The Audacious Project channels large philanthropic grants to social impact ideas presented at the conference. TED also built businesses in podcasts, books, and corporate partnerships.

In February 2025 Anderson announced he would step back and invited proposals for new stewardship of the organization. The process concluded in October 2025 with the selection of Sal Khan as Vision Steward and Logan McClure Davda as CEO. TED2026 in Vancouver was the last conference in that city; the flagship event moves to California in 2027.