Spotify

Spotify was founded in 2006 in Stockholm by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and launched its streaming service in 2008. Its operational headquarters are still in Stockholm.

It started with music and now also streams podcasts and audiobooks, with a free tier paid for by ads and a Premium subscription. Personalised recommendations - Discover Weekly, Daylist, the AI DJ - are at the heart of the product.

Spotify's engineering culture of autonomous squads and tribes became widely known well beyond the company. It created Backstage, the developer portal now hosted by the CNCF, and works mostly from Stockholm, New York and London.