David Vélez is Founder and CEO of Nubank, the digital bank he launched in 2013 to challenge Brazil's concentrated, fee-heavy banking sector. He also serves as Nubank's chairman and sits on the board of OpenAI.

Born in Medellín, Colombia, Vélez studied Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and later earned his MBA there. He worked at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and General Atlantic, then became a Partner at Sequoia Capital leading Latin American investments.

Vélez has said Nubank should be a technology company that happens to operate in financial services, not a bank that uses technology. He and his wife Mariel have pledged to give away the majority of their fortune to philanthropy.

Nubank started with a no-fee purple credit card managed entirely through an app, with Sequoia Capital as an early backer and Berkshire Hathaway among its later investors. It listed on the NYSE in December 2021 at a valuation of about $41 billion.

Nubank serves over 135 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and passed $1 billion in quarterly net income for the first time in Q2 2026. It began serving US customers in September 2026, its first market outside Latin America.