Daniel Ek

Co-founder of Spotify — beat music piracy by building a legal product better than free, scaled it to 675M+ users and 263M subscribers, and (as of Jan 2026) serves as executive chairman.

Daniel Ek (born 1983, Stockholm) co-founded Spotify with Martin Lorentzon in 2006. A self-taught coder and serial entrepreneur who dropped out of KTH, he reframed music piracy as a product problem and built a freemium streaming service — instant, vast, and free at the point of use — that out-competed file-sharing. After roughly two years of label negotiations, Spotify launched in 2008, reached the US in 2011, and went public via a 2018 NYSE direct listing. It grew to 675M+ monthly users and 263M subscribers and posted its first full-year profit in 2024. Ek stepped down as CEO and became executive chairman on 1 January 2026; he also backs Neko Health and the Prima Materia fund (and chairs defence-AI firm Helsing).

Notable achievements

• Co-founded Spotify (2006) and beat music piracy by building a legal streaming product better and more convenient than free.
• Negotiated ~2 years with the major labels to license a global catalogue, then scaled to 675M+ users and 263M subscribers.
• Took Spotify public via an unusual NYSE direct listing (2018) and drove its first full-year profit (~€1.14bn) in 2024.
• Expanded Spotify into podcasts (Gimlet, Anchor, Joe Rogan) and built playlists and Wrapped into industry-shaping engines.
• Co-founded Neko Health (preventive health scanning) and the Prima Materia "European moonshots" fund; became Spotify executive chairman in 2026.

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