Lutke is co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, a cloud-based commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The German-born Canadian entrepreneur started the company in 2004 and has been its chief executive since 2008. Shopify is used in more than 175 countries around the world.
Lutke's fortune is derived from Shopify, the cloud-based commerce platform used by businesses in more than 175 countries around the world, according to the company's website.
The billionaire owns about 6% of Shopify, according to the company's amended annual report filed in April 2025 and SEDI filings to January 2026. Most of these are Class B shares, which are immediately exchangeable to Class A common shares on a one-for-one basis.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of insider transactions, dividends, taxes and market performance.
Julie Nicholson, a spokesperson for the company, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Tobias Lutke grew up in Koblenz, Germany, and was given his first computer at age 6, according to a 2016 New York Times profile. He dropped out of school at age 16 and took an apprenticeship as a programmer and attended vocational school, according to a blog post on his personal website.
A snowboarding enthusiast, he met his future wife Fiona McKean on a ski trip to British Columbia. He soon persuaded her to move to Germany and then agreed to move to Canada a year later, according to a 2014 profile of Lutke in the Globe and Mail newspaper. The pair later married.
He founded the company that would become Shopify in Ottawa in 2004, eventually taking an investment from his father-in-law Bruce McKean. Lutke took the title of CEO in 2008 and, by 2013, the company had revenue of more than $50 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Shopify held its initial public offering in 2015 at $17 a share. Lutke became a billionaire in 2017 following share price growth at the company.