Daniel Ek

Daniel Georg Ek (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈdɑ̂ːnɪɛl ˈjěːɔrj ěːk]; born 21 February 1983) is a Swedish businessman and technologist. He is the founder and executive chairman of Spotify. As of December 2025, his net worth was estimated at $8.7 billion by Forbes.

Early life and education

Ek grew up in the Rågsved district of Stockholm, Sweden. He graduated from high school in IT-Gymnasiet in Sundbyberg Municipality in 2002 and then studied engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology for 8 weeks before dropping out to focus on his IT career.

Career

Early career

Ek began making websites and open-source technologies as early as fourteen years old. Shortly after graduating high school he worked at Jajja, a search engine optimization firm. Ek had a senior role at Nordic auction company Tradera, which was acquired by eBay in 2006. He was also the CTO of the browser-based game and fashion community Stardoll and later started Advertigo, an online advertising company. Advertigo was sold to TradeDoubler in 2006, after which Ek briefly became the CEO of μTorrent, working with μTorrent founder Ludvig Strigeus until μTorrent was sold to BitTorrent in December 2006. Strigeus would later join Ek as a Spotify developer.