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Mark Shuttleworth

Technology entrepreneur

By South African Index Editorial Desk · Published · Updated

Mark Shuttleworth speaking in Paris in 2009
Photograph: Nitot · Source · CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized and converted to WebP for this site.

Mark Shuttleworth founded the internet security company Thawte and later Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. He travelled to the International Space Station in 2002 as a member of the Soyuz TM-34 crew. [1][2]

Biography

Canonical’s account says Shuttleworth founded Thawte in 1996 while studying finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town. The company worked in internet commerce security. In 2000 he founded the investment business HBD and established the Shuttleworth Foundation. [1]

He spent a year training in Star City, Russia, before travelling to the International Space Station on Soyuz TM-34 in 2002. After his flight he promoted coding, science and mathematics to South African schoolchildren, according to Canonical’s biography. [1]

Shuttleworth went on to found Canonical and work on Ubuntu. Canonical describes itself as the company behind Ubuntu and dates its establishment to 2004. His later role at Canonical connects his earlier software-security business with the development and commercial support of an open-source operating system. [1][2]

Key contributions

Founded Thawte, an early internet commerce security company, while a student in Cape Town. [1]

Founded Canonical and worked on Ubuntu, with Canonical providing commercial support for the software. [1][2]

Career timeline

  1. Founded Thawte while studying at the University of Cape Town. [1]

  2. Travelled to the International Space Station on Soyuz TM-34. [1]

  3. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, was established. [2]

Sources

  1. Canonical, Introducing the Fan – simpler container networking: About the author, 2015-06-24. Original source. Accessed 2026-09-23. ↩
  2. Canonical, Canonical presence at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, 2021-10-11. Original source. Accessed 2026-09-23. ↩