How spaceman Shuttleworth made a fortune with Ubuntu software

He’s best known for being the world’s first “Afronaut”, but since returning to Earth from his 2002 trip on Russia’s Soyuz TM-34 rocket ship, Cape Town native Mark Shuttleworth set about with the conquest of a much more lucrative universe: the internet of things.

Shuttleworth created Ubuntu, an open-source Linux operating system that helps connect everything from drones to thermostats to the internet. His company, Canonical Group, makes money from about 800 paying customers, including Netflix, Tesla and Deutsche Telekom AG, which pay for support services. Its success has helped boost his net worth to US$1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“It’s destructive to be too focused on that,” Shuttleworth says of his wealth. “It’s just a distraction from whether you have your finger on the pulse of what’s next.”

‘Close second’

What’s next for the 44-year-old mogul is ensuring Ubuntu is the base language used across the internet of things, where end-point devices such as televisions and cars have their own programming and cloud connectivity. Canonical sees as many as 3 million downloads of its software and 50 million security updates each day, and because Ubuntu is free and doesn’t require registration, the company isn’t sure how many devices are running on it today.

“Canonical may not be as big as Red Hat, but there are probably areas Red Hat isn’t doing as much work in, so there is opportunity there for somebody to come in and fill those gaps,” says Tim Klasell, senior research analyst at Northland Securities. “Those gaps have become big enough because Linux has become big enough.”

Red Hat Inc. is the biggest Linux provider and Ubuntu “is a close second”, says Mandeep Singh, an infrastructure software analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “Amazon, Google and pretty much every large tech company which has developed their cloud in-house uses Ubuntu or one of the other open-source guys.”

Early take-off