Who Owns Xero?

Rod Drury, a serial entrepreneur who had built and sold the email archiving company AfterMail, founded Xero in Wellington in 2006 with accountant Hamish Edwards. Drury's thesis was that small business accounting software was trapped on the desktop, and that a fully cloud-native ledger connected directly to bank feeds would change the market. The company coded the product publicly and listed on the New Zealand Exchange in 2007, just a year after founding, using the public listing to fund development.

Xero grew first in New Zealand, then Australia, where it overtook incumbent desktop products and became the dominant cloud accounting platform. It entered the United Kingdom in 2008 and the United States in 2011, though the American market proved far harder; Intuit's QuickBooks held a commanding position that Xero has worked against ever since.

The company moved its primary listing to the ASX in 2018, delisting from the NZX to concentrate liquidity on the larger exchange. Revenue passed NZ$1 billion in fiscal 2022. Leadership transitioned in 2018 when Drury handed the CEO role to Steve Vamos, a former Microsoft Australia chief, who was succeeded in 2023 by Singh Cassidy.

Under Singh Cassidy the company shifted from growth-at-all-costs to profitable growth, achieving a Rule of 40 score of 48.5 percent in fiscal 2026. The June 2025 agreement to acquire Melio for $2.5 billion upfront plus contingent payments, closed in October 2025, was the largest deal in company history and aimed squarely at the underpenetrated U.S. market. Fiscal 2026 results showed revenue up 31 percent to NZ$2.75 billion, including Melio's contribution, with 4.92 million subscribers.