INTELLIGENCE · PERSON DOSSIER
UPDATED 2026-08-13David Vélez
Founders & CEOs
Nubank · Brazil
Net worth
US$13.3bn (Forbes, 12 August 2026)
Voting power in Nu Holdings
74.4%
Economic stake in Nu Holdings
Approximately 18.6% of shares in issue
Holding vehicle
Rua California Ltd.
Control rights
Consent rights over change of control; board classification deferred while he holds a majority
Identity & Ownership
Current role
Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nu Holdings Ltd. (Nubank)
Listed in the 2025 Form 20-F as "David Vélez Osorno, 44, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer". He has been chief executive since founding the business in 2013 and signs the annual report as Chairman and CEO.
Full legal name
David Vélez Osorno
The form used throughout Nu Holdings' SEC filings, including the signature page of the 2025 Form 20-F and the Schedule 13G/A filed by his holding vehicle.
Born
1981, Medellín, Colombia
Year and birthplace per Wikipedia, drawing on a Forbes cover profile. Nu Holdings' 2025 Form 20-F gives his age as 44; Forbes also lists 44.
Age
44
Stated in the directors' table of the 2025 Form 20-F, filed 8 April 2026.
Nationality
Colombian and Costa Rican
Wikipedia records dual Colombian and Costa Rican citizenship, sourced to a Forbes profile. Forbes' own billionaires listing records his citizenship as Colombia.
Based
São Paulo, Brazil
Forbes lists São Paulo as his residence. In 2018 he described his commute as a six-minute walk after moving closer to Nubank's office.
Company headquarters
Rua Capote Valente 39, Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil
The business address given for Nu Holdings' management team in the 2025 Form 20-F. The holding company itself is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, with a registered office at Willow House, Cricket Square, Grand Cayman.
Listed company
Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NU; B3: ROXO34)
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2021 under the symbol NU, with Brazilian Depositary Receipts trading on the B3 in São Paulo.
Education
Stanford University, BSc Management Science and Engineering; Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA
Both degrees are confirmed in his director biography in the 2025 Form 20-F. Wikipedia dates the MBA to 2012; the Forbes profile refers to a 2010 Stanford MBA cohort, so the graduation year is unsettled.
Spouse
Mariel Lorena Reyes Milk
Identified as "the wife of Mr. Vélez" in the beneficial ownership footnotes of the 2025 Form 20-F, where she holds 1,500,000 Class B ordinary shares of record. She founded {reprograma}, a Brazilian non-profit that trains under-represented women in software development.
Children
Four
Wikipedia reports four children, the youngest born in 2022, citing Bloomberg Línea.
Personal Wealth & Holdings
Net worth
US$13.3bn (Forbes, 12 August 2026)
Forbes real-time billionaires list, ranking him 233rd in the world, source of wealth fintech, self-made. Forbes estimates are marked to the Nu Holdings share price and move daily. Its 2025 annual list put him 236th at US$10.7bn.
Voting power in Nu Holdings
74.4%
As of 31 December 2025 he beneficially owned 3,088,117 Class A ordinary shares and 903,124,498 Class B ordinary shares, representing 88.3% of the Class B and 74.4% of total voting power. Class B shares carry 20 votes each; Class A shares carry one.
Economic stake in Nu Holdings
Approximately 18.6% of shares in issue
Derived from the 2025 Form 20-F: 906,212,615 shares beneficially owned against 3,837,998,543 Class A and 1,022,600,698 Class B shares outstanding as of 1 March 2026. Not a figure Nu Holdings states directly.
Holding vehicle
Rua California Ltd.
A Cayman Islands company of which Vélez holds 100% of the shares and is a director. It holds 901,624,498 Class B and 698,914 Class A shares of record, and is the named 5% shareholder in Nu Holdings' filings. Its SEC filer CIK is 0001914225.
Control rights
Consent rights over change of control; board classification deferred while he holds a majority
Nu Holdings' articles require prior written approval of a majority of Class B shares for a merger or change of control for so long as Vélez and his affiliates hold at least 10% of voting power. The board only splits into three staggered classes once he ceases to hold more than 50% of voting power.
Stake at IPO
Around 23%, worth about US$10.2bn on the first day of trading
Forbes' figure on 9 December 2021. The prospectus itself records that he beneficially owned 86.2% of the Class B shares and 75.0% of voting power immediately after the offering.
Share sales since listing
89m Class A shares across three August sales, for about US$1.03bn gross
Rua California Ltd. filed Form 144 notices for 25,000,000 shares at an aggregate market value of US$192.5m (August 2023), 31,000,000 shares at US$403.62m (August 2024) and 33,000,000 shares at US$435.6m (August 2025), all through J.P. Morgan Securities. Totals are the sum of the three filings.
Giving commitment
The Giving Pledge, signed 11 August 2021 with Mariel Reyes
The couple committed to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy, and said they would do so "until 'our last check bounces', as one of our personal heroes, Chuck Feeney, likes to say".
Giving vehicle
VélezReyes+
The family philanthropic platform he and Mariel Reyes launched in October 2022, investing in education and democracy across Latin America. No aggregate commitment figure has been published.
Background
Left Medellín at nine, during Colombia's cartel violence
Forbes reports that Vélez was born into an entrepreneurial family in Medellín in 1981 and that the family left Colombia after an uncle was kidnapped, when he was nine. Forbes' billionaires profile describes it as fleeing to Costa Rica to escape warring drug cartels.
His father's button factory in Costa Rica
In the letter from the founders in Nubank's IPO prospectus he traces his ambition to "the entrepreneurship challenge I had been looking for since I was a child working in my father's button company in Costa Rica".
Investment banking and growth equity at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and General Atlantic
Sequence as given in his director biography in the 2025 Form 20-F. Forbes reports two years at Morgan Stanley before he moved to General Atlantic to cover Latin American investments.
Partner in charge of the firm's Latin American investments before founding Nubank
Confirmed in the Form 20-F biography. Sequoia says it recruited him out of Stanford GSB in late 2010 to assess opening a Brazil office; when the firm decided against it, it backed him instead, with Doug Leone and Sonya Huang leading the relationship from 2013.
Sequoia shelved its Brazil office; he turned down a California role and stayed
In Sequoia's Crucible Moments podcast, Vélez recalls Doug Leone telling him the Brazil plan was off. Forbes quotes him on the timing: "It was the day before my birthday and it was a bit of a shock." He declined a US posting and pursued his own venture in Brazil instead.
A four-month attempt to open a Brazilian bank account in mid-2012 became the founding premise of Nubank
His own account in the IPO prospectus: bulletproof doors, armed guards, long queues, repeated visits, and finally an account carrying hundreds of reais a year in fees. "The entire experience was incredibly frustrating." In the Sequoia podcast he describes a five-month process and a 45-minute wait for a branch manager.
Co-founded in São Paulo in 2013 at the age of 31 with Cristina Junqueira and Edward Wible
Nu Holdings states it was founded in 2013 and began operations in Brazil in 2014. Wikipedia dates incorporation to 6 May 2013 and reports he was 31. Sequoia and Kaszek Ventures provided the seed capital; the prospectus names the three as the "co-founders", with Wible's legal name given as Adam Edward Wible.
A card executive from Itaú Unibanco and a private-equity-turned-engineer
Junqueira ran consumer credit, card products and marketing at Itaú Unibanco, Brazil's largest private bank, before joining. Vélez on hiring her: "In a big company, that's a negative because everybody feels threatened by that type of presence... But as an entrepreneur, that was a huge positive." On Wible: "Ed was a hacker. He loved to code. He loved technology. He had an incredible work ethic."
Protects two hours a day for unstructured thinking
In a 2018 Sequoia interview: "Now I try to protect one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon where I turn off Slack, and I don't check email." He also says the week is the unit of time by which he measures progress.
Order of Democracy Simón Bolívar, rank of Grand Knight (Gran Caballero)
Conferred by Colombia's Chamber of Representatives on 4 September 2024, the chamber's highest distinction.
Named among the top leaders in the Merco Leaders ranking, 2025
Nu Holdings' 2025 Form 20-F records that "Cristina Junqueira and David Vélez remain top names in the Merco Leaders ranking", and that the company and its executives collected more than 100 global awards in 2025.
Notable Coverage
21 items
Nu passes 135 million customers, clears US$5bn of quarterly revenue and breaks even in Mexico
Nu takes naming rights to Inter Miami's new stadium
Nu Holdings closes 2025 with 131 million customers and record profit
OCC grants conditional approval for a US national bank, Nubank N.A.
Febraban disputes Vélez's claim that Nubank pays more tax than Brazil's big banks
Nubank subsequently declined to escalate, saying it would not keep responding to attacks.