Jimmy Wales

Current Company

Wikipedia & Wikia — Co-Founder

The Unlikely Founder of Free Knowledge

Jimmy Wales started his career in finance, trading options and futures in Chicago before becoming fascinated by the internet's potential to democratize information. In 2001, he co-founded Wikipedia — a free, open-source encyclopedia that anyone could edit. The idea was considered absurd by most of the tech world at the time, but Wikipedia grew explosively, becoming one of the top ten websites globally within a few years.

Unlike virtually every other major internet platform, Wales chose to operate Wikipedia as a nonprofit through the Wikimedia Foundation, funded by donations rather than advertising. This decision meant Wales never became a tech billionaire — but it also kept Wikipedia independent, ad-free, and trusted by billions of users worldwide.

A Different Model of Internet Success

Jimmy Wales also co-founded Wikia (now Fandom), a for-profit wiki-hosting platform that became the world's largest entertainment fan community site. But it is Wikipedia that defines his legacy — a proof of concept that the internet could produce something genuinely for the public good, at massive scale, without extractive business models.

Wales has spent decades advocating for internet freedom, fighting censorship, and championing open knowledge. In an era dominated by billionaire-founded platforms optimized for engagement and advertising revenue, Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia stand as the most important counterexample in the history of the internet.