- Company
- Nubank
- Role
- Founder & CEO
- Est. Net Worth
- $7 Billion
- Stage
- Elite
- Industry
- Finance
David Vélez
Founder & CEO at Nubank
About
David Vélez founded Nubank in 2013 in São Paulo, building it into Latin America's largest digital bank and one of the biggest neobanks in the world. Born in Colombia and educated at Stanford, he took Nubank public in 2021 and the company now serves over 100 million customers.
Current Company
Nubank — Founder & CEO
Disrupting Banking in Latin America
David Vélez founded Nubank in 2013 in São Paulo after experiencing firsthand how broken the banking system was in Latin America. Born in Colombia and educated at Stanford, David Vélez had worked at Sequoia Capital and Morgan Stanley before moving to Brazil, where he discovered that consumers were paying some of the highest banking fees in the world while receiving some of the worst service. David Vélez launched Nubank as a digital-only bank with no branches, no fees, and a purple credit card that became a status symbol of financial empowerment.
Under David Vélez’s leadership as Founder and CEO, Nubank has grown to over 100 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, making it the largest digital bank in the world outside of China. David Vélez took Nubank public on the NYSE in 2021, and the company has since achieved profitability. Nubank’s success under David Vélez proved that fintech disruption wasn’t just a developed-market phenomenon — emerging markets, with their legacy banking pain points, were arguably the biggest opportunity.