Tyler Winklevoss

Tyler Howard Winklevoss was born on August 21, 1981, in Southampton, New York, and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is the son of Carol (née Leonard) and Howard Winklevoss, who started an asset management company overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars, and is an author and professor of actuarial science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Winklevoss attended Greenwich Country Day School and graduated from Brunswick School. Winklevoss studied classical piano for 12 years, beginning at age 6. He studied Latin and Ancient Greek in high school. During his junior year, he and his twin brother Cameron founded the crew program.

On June 14, 2002, Winklevoss's older sister, Amanda, died from cardiac arrest induced by drug overdose.

He matriculated to Harvard College in 2000 and majored in economics, earning an AB degree and graduating in 2004. At Harvard, he was a member of the men's varsity crew, the Porcellian Club and the Hasty Pudding Club.

In 2009, Winklevoss began a graduate business study at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and completed an MBA in 2010. While at Oxford, he was a member of Christ Church, an Oxford Blue, and rowed in the losing Blue Boat in the 156th Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

In the first half of 2025, Winklevoss and his brother Cameron each donated around $500,000 to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports Donald Trump. Donations also included hundreds of thousands of dollars each to Republicans’ House and Senate campaign committees and maximum donations to roughly two dozen Republican candidates. They also dished out more than $160,000 each in January to a committee linked to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In October 2025, Winklevoss and his brother Cameron were named by the White House as donors to the construction of the White House State Ballroom, a proposed 90,000-square-foot expansion of the East Wing.

Facebook lawsuits

In 2004, ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that creator Mark Zuckerberg had broken its oral contract. The suit alleged that Zuckerberg had copied ConnectU's idea and illegally used source code intended for the website Zuckerberg was hired to develop. Facebook countersued with respect to Social Butterfly, a Winklevoss Chang Group project. The countersuit named among the defendants ConnectU, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, Divya Narendra, and Wayne Chang, founder of i2hub. An agreement settling both cases was reached in February 2008, with the Winklevoss party receiving $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock. In May 2010, however, ConnectU accused Facebook of misrepresenting the value of the stock that it turned over to the ConnectU plaintiffs as part of the settlement and sought to void the settlement. ConnectU alleged that the value of the stock was $11 million rather than $45 million, as represented by Facebook at the time of settlement. As a result, the total settlement value would have been $31 million, rather than the $65 million reported. On August 26, 2010, the New York Times reported that Facebook shares were then trading at $76 per share in the secondary market, putting the value of the total settlement at close to $120 million. If the lawsuit to revise the settlement were to succeed, the settlement value would rise to $466 million. In April 2011, Ninth Circuit judge Alex Kozinski opined that "[a]t some point, litigation must come to an end.... That point has now been reached." The twins' lawyer stated that they would seek a rehearing with the entire appeals court bench. In June 2011 it was announced that a decision to pursue the case in the Supreme Court had been withdrawn.

Quinn Emanuel lawsuits

One of ConnectU's law firms, Quinn Emanuel, inadvertently disclosed the confidential settlement amount in marketing material by printing "WON $65 million settlement against Facebook". Quinn Emanuel sought $13 million as its contingency fee related to the original settlement. ConnectU fired Quinn Emanuel and sued the law firm for malpractice. On August 25, 2010, an arbitration panel ruled that Quinn Emanuel "earned its full contingency fee." The panel also found that Quinn Emanuel committed no malpractice.

The Winklevoss Chang Group lawsuit

On December 21, 2009, i2hub founder Wayne Chang and The i2hub Organization launched a lawsuit against ConnectU and its founders, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, seeking 50% of the settlement proceeds from the original lawsuit. The complaint says "The Winklevosses and Howard Winklevoss filed [a] patent application, U.S. Patent Application No 20060212395, on or around March 15, 2005, but did not list Chang as a co-inventor. It also states "Through this litigation, Chang asserts his ownership interest in The Winklevoss Chang Group and ConnectU, including the settlement proceeds." Lee Gesmer of Gesmer Updegrove, LLP posted the detailed 33-page complaint online.

On May 13, 2011, it was reported that Judge Peter Lauriat made a ruling against the Winklevosses. Chang's case against them could proceed. The Winklevosses had argued that the court lacks jurisdiction because the settlement with Facebook has not been distributed and therefore Chang hasn't suffered any injury. Judge Lauriat wrote, "The flaw in this argument is that defendants appear to conflate loss of the settlement proceed with loss of rights. Chang alleges that he has received nothing in return for the substantial benefits he provided to ConnectU, including the value of his work, as well as i2hub's users and goodwill." Lauriat also wrote that, although Chang's claims to the settlement are "too speculative to confer standing, his claims with respect to an ownership in ConnectU are not. They constitute an injury separate and distinct from his possible share of the settlement proceeds. The court concludes that Chang has pled sufficient facts to confer standing with respect to his claims against the Winklevoss defendants."