Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek link Twitter Website
Daniel Ek link Twitter Website; (Billionaire);
	File:Daniel Ek.jpg
Born	Daniel Georg Ek; 21 February 1983; Stockholm, Sweden
Children	2
Spouse	Sofia Levander
Interests	AI healthcare, military drones
	Swedish tech billionaire and investor in AI healthcare and military drone producer Helsing. Went to his first Bilderberg in 2024, and in 2025 together with Gundbert Scherf, also from Helsing, when a topic was Defence Innovation and Resilience

Daniel Ek is a Swedish Swedish tech billionaire and investor in AI healthcare and military drone producer Helsing. He attended the 2024 and 2025 Bilderberg meetings, in 2025 together with Gundbert Scherf, also from Helsing.

Early life and education

Ek 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.^[1]^[2]

Activities

Spotify

Ek is the founder and executive chairman of Spotify, which launched its legal music streaming service in October 2008.

Daniel Ek was CEO of Spotify as company censored over 20,000 various podcast episodes about Covid, including removing a bunch of Joe Rogan episodes.^[3]^[4]

On 30 September 2025, Ek announced that he would step down as CEO of Spotify at the end of the year, while remaining as executive chairman.^[5]

Neko Health

Ek founded Neko Health in 2018, which made the "lofty promise of preventative healthcare via full-body scans backed by AI software".^[6] TechCrunch reported in 2023 that "Details of Neko’s exact technology and approach remain pretty fuzzy, given it's[sic.] declining press interviews, so a lot of detail remains to be filled in."^[7] Ek chairs the company but is not involved in daily operations.^[8]

Armaments

Ek established Prima Materia, an investment company, along with Spotify investor Shakil Khan in February 2021, pledging to invest $1 billion into European "moonshots."^[9]^[10]

Prima Materia was an early investor in German weapons' technology company and drone maker Helsing, of which Ek is chairman.^[11] In 2025, the Financial Times reported Prima Materia led a €600 million (£446 million) investment in Helsing.^[12]

On 25 February 2025, Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, and Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, received the visit of Daniel Ek.^[13]

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References

[1] ttps://web.archive.org/web/20190530134347/https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/01/04/spotifys-daniel-ek-the-most-important-man-in-music/3/#c16c443218ed

[:0-2] ttps://web.archive.org/web/20230717205719/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/people/daniel-ek/

[3] ttps://www.theverge.com/2022/2/6/22921203/spotify-joe-rogan-episode-removal-internal-memo

[4] ttps://reclaimthenet.org/spotify-is-not-a-free-speech-platform

[5] ttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rv35xp07lo

[6] ttps://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2023/07/17/whole-body-scans-back-from-the-grave-and-ready-to-party/

[7] ttps://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/neko-health/

[8] ttps://www.thetimes.com/business-money/technology/article/spotifys-co-founder-backs-a-hit-with-preventive-body-scans-dpqplv5w3

[9] ttps://archive.today/20220218053540/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-18/spotify-s-daniel-ek-builds-insane-1-billion-bet-on-early-tech

[10] ttps://archive.today/20230430080359/https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-funds-storonsky-ek-niel-pousaz

[11] ttps://archive.today/20250617124723/https://www.ft.com/content/cdc02d96-13b5-4ca2-aa0b-1fc7568e9fa0

[12] ttps://www.nme.com/news/music/xiu-xiu-to-remove-music-from-spotify-due-to-ceo-daniel-eks-investment-in-ai-war-drones-3880645

[13] ttps://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/photo/P-065685

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