Dan Clancy

Daniel Joseph Clancy (born January 11, 1964) is an American technologist and computer scientist. After working at NASA, he was the engineering director for Google Book Search from 2005 to 2010 and then for other Google products, until leaving in 2014 for Nextdoor.com. From 2014 to 2018, Clancy was vice president of product and engineering at social networking service Nextdoor.

Clancy became president of Twitch Interactive Inc., the operator of Twitch in 2019. In March 2023, he became chief executive officer of Twitch, after previous CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear announced he would step down. As CEO, Clancy reports directly to Amazon VP of Audio, Twitch, and Games Steve Boom.

Early life After attending Jesuit High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, Clancy received a BA in computer science and theatre from Duke University in 1985. He has a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Texas at Austin. While in school, Clancy worked at Trilogy, Xerox Webster Research center and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Career

NASA Clancy worked in different positions at NASA, first as a researcher on Integrated Health Management, autonomy, and robotics in 1998. In 2000 Clancy became chief of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Since 2003 he served as director of the Exploration Technologies Directorate, also at Ames.

Google In 2005, Clancy left NASA for Google, where he worked on International Search Quality, before becoming Engineering Lead for Google Book Search.

In 2008, he became Engineering Lead at Google Search Properties along with Jen Fitzpatrick, with responsibility for all of Google's search products, like Image Search, Product Search, Google News, Book Search, Google Finance or Google Video, with a continued focus on Book Search as well as Google News. leading a variety of research teams including Sibyl, Googles massively parallel machine learning program, Human Computer Interaction, personalization and recommendations, and the Course Builder team & EdX partnership.

On September 21, 2022, Clancy announced that Twitch would lower the subscription split all streamers receive to 50/50, from the previous 70/30 for select partners, reportedly to ensure Twitch would not operate at a loss. On the same day, Bloomberg reported that Twitch's Vice President of global creators, Constance Knight, would be leaving the company. The company's chief content officer Mike Aragon and chief operating officer Sara Clemens had also left earlier the same year. The change was criticized by streamers, as well as the head of competitor YouTube Gaming, Ryan Wyatt, saying "the creator should be getting a disproportionate amount—this shouldn’t even be up for debate". YouTube Gaming offers a 70/30 split, while platforms like OnlyFans or Patreon take 20% or less.

On March 16, 2023, Clancy became CEO of Twitch, after previous CEO and Justin.tv co-founder Emmett Shear announced he would step down after 16 years at the company. In January 2024, another round of layoffs totaling 500 people (35% of staff) was announced.