Jack Zhang helped build a $8 billion fintech startup called Airwallex
Jack Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex.
Courtesy of Jack Zhang
The word “burnout” doesn’t exist in the vocabulary of Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of fintech company Airwallex.
“I honestly don’t understand this terminology at all. I worked 100 hours a week [the] “I’m 16 years old and it’s been over 20 years,” Zhang told CNBC Make It.
For Zhang, hard work meant survival. At the age of 15, he moved from his hometown of Qingdao, China, only to Melbourne, Australia, to pursue better opportunities. He spoke very little English and stayed with an Australian host family.
Shortly after arriving, he learned that his parents had found themselves in a difficult financial situation in China and that he would have to support himself through college.
“I [had] I have two options: I either go back to China and try to get back into the education system there, or I stay in Australia and figure out how to pay. [for my] learning and life [expenses] on my own,” said Zhang. He decided to stick with the latter and took on any job he could find to make ends meet.
To pay for his computer science degree at the University of Melbourne, Zhang juggled four blue-collar jobs: washing dishes in a restaurant during the day, bartending in the evenings, working the night shift at a gas station and packing lemons in a factory in the summer.
He says some weeks he works 80 to 100 hours in addition to his classes.
“You… when you were in a difficult situation [where] You’re supposed to survive, actually you’re not [thinking] about burnout. “So you either survive or you don’t, right?” he said.
Not much has changed since then. Zhang, now in his 40s, still “easily” works 80 hours a week at his fintech firm. The company, as of December 2025 valuable 8 billion dollars.
From blue collar to millionaire
Zhang entered the corporate world after graduating from university in 2007. Before entering the banking industry, his first job was at an insurance company called Aviva.
He also founded several side businesses, from a shipping company to a real estate development firm, through which he exported olive oil and red wine from Australia to parts of Asia.
Their side hustle proved profitable. By the time he was in his 20s, money was no longer a problem. But despite having accumulated millions through his businesses and banking career, Zhang said he has yet to find his true passion.
Everything changed when her daughter was born at the age of 30.
“I remember looking at him just now, I [felt] For example, I didn’t do anything [to] make him proud. And I guess that’s the moment [decided] “I need to stop doing these side hustles and retire from my full-time job and do something properly big,” Zhang said.
“Although I always wanted money, I realized that money alone does not make money [me] “It’s the ultimate happiness,” he added. Instead, he said he wanted to build something he was extremely passionate about.
“I always wanted to find something [where] I don’t need anyone to wake me up, and… every day I feel extremely passionate, obligated, and willing to dedicate my whole life to it,” said Zhang. So in December 2015, he quit his banking job and began the next chapter of his life.
Starting Airwallex
The idea for Airwallex stemmed from one of Zhang’s side hustles, a Melbourne-based cafe he runs with his co-founder and university friend Max Li.
As part of running the business, the duo often imported coffee beans and ingredients from places like China and Brazil, which required them to send money overseas. Through this process, they realized how expensive and inefficient cross-border payments and transfers through the traditional SWIFT system were.
“Why can’t we create a payment system parallel to SWIFT and fundamentally change the way money moves around the world?” we thought. said Zhang. They wanted to create a solution that would facilitate cross-border payments and thus the original idea for Airwallex was born.
Zhang and Li brought together other friends from their university network to help work on the idea: Lucy Liu, Jacob Dai, and Ki-lok Wong. Liu played a key role in the startup, investing the first $1 million into the venture.
Towards the end of 2015, the group officially founded Airwallex. After nearly a decade of 80-hour workweeks, as of the end of last year the company $1 billion Annualized run rate revenue (ARR) estimates a company’s future annual earnings based on shorter-term financial data.
“I am still very excited about what lies ahead,” Zhang said. “I think we have tons of opportunities ahead of us… [at least] 10 billion dollars [in] “We’ll be generating revenue by 2030, so that’s our next goal.”
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