Mark Richard Shuttleworth is a South African-British entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the development of the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system.
Mark Shuttleworth, a South African entrepreneur, philanthropist, and space tourist who became the first South African in space.
Shuttleworth was born in Welkom South Africa, to a surgeon and a nursery-school teacher, Shuttleworth attended school at Western Province Preparatory School followed by one term at Rondebosch Boys’ High School, and then at Bishops/Diocesan College, where he was Head Boy in 1991. Shuttleworth obtained a Bachelor of Business Science degree in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Cape Town. As a student, he became involved in the installation of the first residential Internet connections at the university.
In 1995, Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting, a company which specialized in digital certificates and Internet security. In December 1999, Shuttleworth sold Thawte to VeriSign, earning Shuttleworth R3.5 billion In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital (Here be Dragons), a business incubator and venture capital provider now managed by Knife Capital.

In 2001, at a personal cost of $20 million, Shuttleworth bought a seat on a Russian spacecraft and began the First African in Space project. For nearly a year he trained in Star City, Russia, and in Kazakhstan for a mission aboard a Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). On April 25, 2002, Shuttleworth lifted off on Soyuz TM-34 with two cosmonauts, commander Yury Gidzenko of Russia and flight engineer Roberto Vittori of Italy, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked two days later at the ISS. Shuttleworth spent eight days aboard the space station, where he conducted scientific experiments for South Africa. He returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-33 on May 5, 2002.
Upon returning, Shuttleworth traveled widely and spoke about spaceflight to schoolchildren around the world. He returned to his work in technology, and in 2004 he founded Canonical, which became the parent company of various ventures, most notably Ubuntu. That project created desktop and operating system software for free distribution to computer users, with a special focus on expanding personal computer access in developing countries. Shuttleworth served as CEO of Canonical until 2009, when he stepped down. However, he returned to the post in 2017.