Who Owns Opera?

Opera began in 1994 as a research project inside Norwegian telecom Telenor, led by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy. The pair spun the project out as Opera Software in 1995 and released the first public browser in 1996, positioning it as a fast, lightweight alternative to Internet Explorer and Netscape. Its compact engine and features such as tabs, speed dial, and built-in ad blocking made it a cult favorite among power users, even as mainstream market share stayed small.

Opera Software listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2004. In 2013 the company made a consequential engineering decision, abandoning its proprietary Presto engine for Chromium's Blink, which improved compatibility but cost the browser some of its technical distinctiveness. The bigger change came in 2016, when the Chinese consortium acquired the browser business, and von Tetzchner, who had left in 2011, went on to found rival browser Vivaldi.

Under Opera Limited the company rebuilt around monetization rather than market share. Revenue comes primarily from advertising and search query partnerships, with Google remaining the largest monetization partner. The product line expanded into niches: Opera GX for gamers in 2019, Opera Air for mindfulness in 2025, and Opera Neon, an agentic AI browser that executes tasks for users, also launched in 2025. By the fourth quarter of 2025 the browser portfolio reached 284 million average monthly active users, with 60 million in higher-value Western markets and Opera GX alone at 34 million.

The financial model worked. Opera grew revenue 28 percent to $614.8 million in FY2025 with adjusted EBITDA of $142.5 million, and in February 2026 the board authorized a $300 million share repurchase program on top of a recurring dividend.