• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

At the start of 2026, Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek plans to transition to the role of executive chairman as the music streaming giant names co-president and CTO Gustav Söderström and Co-President and CBO Alex Norström as future co-CEOs.

According to a press release released by Spotify on Tuesday morning, Ek’s new role will “more closely reflect a European Chairman setup, where he will determine capital allocation, map the long term future of Spotify and continue to provide support and guidance to its senior team.”

In a quote, Ek says he has spent the past few years turning over “a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction” of the company to Söderström and Norström. 

“This change simply matches titles to how we already operate,” Ek adds.

In addition, in a letter to Spotify employees, Ek shared that he wishes to help build more tech-driven “supercompanies” that “tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time.”

Ek’s mention of third-party “supercompanies” calls attention to the executive leading a recent $700 million investment in defense technology firm Helsing, which sells AI-powered weapons and battlefield sensor analysis software aimed at aiding military operations. 

The Helsing investment round has caused popular recording artists to pull their music catalogs from Spotify, including King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Massive Attack, Hotline TNT, and most recently, Sylvan Esso.

Ek founded Spotify in 2006 and has grown the company to almost 700 million monthly active listeners across the globe.