Spotify is undergoing the largest shakeup in the company’s management history with the announcement that co-founder Daniel Ek will be stepping down from the role of CEO, and taking on the position of Executive Chairman.
Stepping into the CEO chair will be two veteran Spotify execs: Gustav Söderström, the company’s current Co-President and Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Alex Norström, Co-President and Chief Business Officer. They will take up their roles as co-CEOS on January 1, 2026.
For Ek, this marks the end of a 19-year stint at the head of the company he co-founded with Martin Lorentzon in 2006 in “a small makeshift office” in Stockholm, building it into what is today a $137 billion company.
Spotify’s stock price has taken a bit of a tumble since Ek’s announcement on September 30, dropping around 7.5% as of mid-day trading on the NYSE on October 9. That may be a reflection of the confidence that investors have in Ek as the driving force behind Spotify, and why Ek has gone to pains to stress that he is not leaving the company, and will continue to have an active hand in the business as a “European”-style Executive Chairman.
“Most investors may come at it from a US perspective, where [Chairman is] mostly a ceremonial role. In Europe, it isn’t. In fact, a Chairman is someone who’s quite active in the business, sometimes even represents the business externally to different stakeholders, like, for instance, governments or key partners,” Ek said on a recent investor call.
Ek walks away from the CEO role as one of the 10 richest people in Sweden, with Forbes estimating his fortune at $9.6 billion. Amid a massive run-up in Spotify’s stock over the past few years (at around $673 per share, it’s gone up about 8.5-fold since a bottom below $80 in late 2022), Ek has cashed in a significant amount of Spotify shares. By MBW’s estimates, he had sold nearly $808 million in Spotify stock as of this past May.
Where is that money going? No doubt at least some of it has ended up in Ek’s new business ventures.
Here are three key things you might have missed about Daniel Ek’s historic departure from the CEO role at Spotify.
1. Ek wants to build European ‘supercompanies’
If there’s a single reason why Ek may want to step away from the day-to-day management of Spotify, it may have to do with… all the other companies he’s involved with these days.
“I am often asked, ‘How do we build more Spotifys out of Europe?’” Ek wrote in a note to staff. “That’s why several years ago, I announced my intention to help create more of these supercompanies – companies that are developing new technologies to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time.”
Ek is playing into a narrative that has been growing increasingly loud among Europe’s business leaders: That while the US and China are rapidly building new multinational companies, Europe is falling behind. Spotify is a rare exception, and that gives Ek the credibility needed to launch new “supercompanies.”
To that end, Ek founded investment firm Prima Materia with Shakil Khan in 2021, through which Ek has pledged to invest EUR €1 billion (USD $1.17 billion) in “moonshot” bets on European businesses focused on deep tech. Prima Materia bills itself as “a European company that builds and develops new companies for the long term.”
One of the investments Ek has stressed the most is Neko Health, a medical tech startup that runs clinics offering body scans as preventative medicine. Ek wants to see it become “the Apple of healthcare.”
Earlier this year, Neko raised $260 million in new financing to expand its clinics to the United States. (Neko’s first clinic in London opened in September 2024.)
“The companies we compare ourselves with are the Apples or Teslas of the world, but we’re applying it to a very different domain, which is healthcare,” Ek said at the time.
“Several years ago, I announced my intention to help create more of these supercompanies – companies that are developing new technologies to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time.”
Daniel Ek, Spotify
But some of Ek’s investments have proven controversial, most notably Prima Materia’s leading role in a €600 million ($700 million) Series D funding round into German defense firm Helsing. The company has sparked concerns over its joint project with Swedish aerospace company Saab to build an AI “combat agent” that can operate fighter jets.
That left a bitter taste in the mouths of many artists on Spotify, especially those who already considered the streaming service to be paying out what they see as low royalty rates on streams, cutting corners on mechanical royalties in the US, and (particularly irksome for some) paying Joe Rogan a huge sum for his podcast.
For some artists, it was the last straw. A number of them, including Sylvan Esso, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Deerhoof and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced they’re pulling their music from Spotify.
Given this recent controversy, some media outlets suggested that Ek’s departure from the CEO role was linked to the Helsing PR headache. Which brings us to the next point…
2. It’s highly unlikely Ek is leaving the CEO role over his defense investments
While it might be tempting to conclude that Ek’s switch to Executive Chairman was a rearguard action designed to deflect criticism over the Helsing investment (which certainly makes for a colorful story), it seems unlikely that this is the case.
Since the announcement, Ek has stressed that this change in leadership has been slowly implemented over the past several years, ever since Norström and Söderström were given the title of Co-President in 2023.
“Since taking over as co-presidents in 2023 [Norström and Söderström] have really stepped up in a material way, taking much of the day-to-day responsibilities,” Ek said on a recent investor call.
“And as they’ve been growing, I’ve been handing them more and more of the tasks. So I feel like this is actually more of a natural reflection of how the company actually works and operates already.”
“This is actually more of a natural reflection of how the company actually works and operates already.”
Daniel Ek, Spotify
But don’t take Ek’s word for it: Music industry insiders who have high-level contact with Spotify have themselves noticed that Ek has recently been placing Norström and Söderström in the foreground.
“We were sensing it for a while,” an unnamed senior executive at a major record label told the Financial Times. “He’s been pushing those guys further and further in the front.”
The exec also suggested that Ek’s switch to Executive Chairman won’t make much of a difference in terms of Spotify’s leadership.
Norström and Söderström are “kind of like clones of him. They’re not founders, but the same kind of Swedish. These are guys he trusts and will ultimately be able to control.”
And it seems the artists boycotting Spotify agree on this point. According to an article at The Verge, few if any artists are giving up on their Spotify boycott as a result of the move.
3. Ek, Norström, and Söderström work so closely that they share an office
In stressing just how not-a-change this change will be, Spotify’s leadership team put on full display just how close a working relationship Ek has with the two incoming co-CEOs.
“Fun fact, we actually sit in the same room, the three of us,” Norström said on the investor call.
“People are very surprised when they see that, but that just has meant so much in terms of momentum and impact for us as a business. So for me and Gustav, this is not so much a change in direction. This is more doubling down on a setup that we think is working and it will increase pace even more.”
And though he didn’t make it entirely clear, it seems Ek plans to continue to keep an office with the two co-CEOs once they’re in place.
“I am still retaining an office here with Gustav and Alex sitting here,” Ek said. “Hopefully working on various types of problems with them.”
But lest an executive board chairman sharing an office with the company’s CEOs seem like overkill, Ek was quick to point out that Norström and Söderström will actually be Spotify’s CEOs.
“With all that said, I do want to make it clear… they’re in charge. They are the ones making the decision[s], but I will be there as a friend, a coach, a shared leader, whatever I’m needed to do for the day in making this happen.”
Reservoir (Nasdaq: RSVR) is a publicly traded, global independent music company with operations across music publishing, recorded music, and artist management. Music Business Worldwide
