Elie Akilian

Elie S. Akilian (born 1956) is a Lebanese-American business executive who is the founder of KingsIsle Entertainment and the studio's former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) from 2005 to 2021. Akilian went on to be the CEO of Austin-based WIMO Games, which originated as KingsIsle's mobile games team and was spun off from the company in early 2021 after KingsIsle Entertainment's acquisition by Media and Games Invest, but has since stepped down from the position.
==Career==
Elie Akilian was born in in 1956 and moved to the in 1975, at the age of 21. He attended the in Arlington where he received his BS in Electrical Engineering in 1979. For nine years, Elie served as Design Engineer and then Manager at Electrospace Systems.Akilian, Elie S. - The Wall Street Transcript
Elie co-founded Inet Technologies in 1989, and served as the Executive Vice President of Production and then the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. After going public, he became the company's President and CEO in April 1999. He then left the company in 2004.
In January 2005, Akilian founded KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. with funds from the $325 million sale of Inet Technologies. He was inspired to form KingsIsle by his son, who was big into video games at the time. Akilian admitted he had "never played a game," but said that he could "put a team together of people who know video games and people who know networks and add some discipline." He shortly after established the company in Plano, Texas and hired developers from Ubisoft and id Software who quickly got to work on creating the project that became Wizard101.
On January 15, 2021, KingsIsle was acquired by Media and Games Invest for $126 million. MGI excluded KingsIsle's mobile games development team from the acquisition, which spun off to form WIMO Games. Elie Akilian stepped down as CEO of KingsIsle Entertainment in February 2021, and became CEO at WIMO Games, though he later stepped down from this position and was replaced by Dave Rosen.
==Gallery==
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==Notes and references==
Category:KingsIsle staff members