Dyson Holdings Pte. Ltd.

Who owns Dyson?

Sir James Dyson and his family own 100 percent through Weybourne Holdings, the family holding company based in Singapore.

Is Dyson publicly traded?

No. Dyson has always been private and has never taken outside equity investment.

Where is Dyson headquartered?

Singapore, at the St James Power Station campus, since 2019. Major R&D operations remain at Hullavington, England.

How does Dyson make money?

Through premium-priced sales of vacuums, hair care tools, air treatment products, hand dryers, and headphones, with gross margins funding one of the industry's largest private R&D budgets.

Who is the CEO of Dyson?

Hanno Kirner, a former Jaguar Land Rover executive, has served as CEO since 2024. Sir James Dyson remains chairman and controlling owner.

Why did Dyson move to Singapore?

The company cited proximity to its Asian manufacturing base and fastest-growing markets. The 2019 move drew criticism because James Dyson had publicly advocated for Brexit.

The company traces to James Dyson's 15-year, 5,127-prototype development of a bagless cyclonic vacuum, begun in 1978 after his Hoover's bag clogged. After established manufacturers declined to license the invention, Dyson took the technology to Japan, where the G-Force launched in 1986, then built his own company in Malmesbury, England, in 1991. The DC01, launched 1993, became Britain's best-selling vacuum inside two years.

The 2000s established the modern business. Manufacturing moved to Malaysia in 2002, the U.S. market opened, and the DC-series cordless and ball vacuums built global scale. New categories followed: Airblade hand dryers (2006), bladeless fans (2009), the Supersonic hair dryer (2016), and the Airwrap styler (2018), which proved that Dyson's motor-and-airflow technology could define an entirely new premium beauty category.

The company's two most consequential decisions both came in 2019. It cancelled a 2.5 billion pound electric vehicle program after concluding it could not be commercially viable, writing off more than 500 million pounds, and it moved the corporate headquarters to Singapore, citing proximity to Asian manufacturing and growth markets. The restored St James Power Station campus opened in 2022.

The 2024 to 2025 period brought restructuring under new CEO Hanno Kirner: roughly 1,000 UK positions were cut as the organization was streamlined, while product cadence accelerated to a record 13 launches in 2025. Financially, 2025 produced a mixed result: revenue fell 6.7 percent to 6.13 billion pounds on tariff and demand headwinds, but EBITDA grew 18 percent to 1.11 billion pounds, and the family extracted a 750 million pound dividend.

Dyson's sustainability posture is engineering-led rather than certification-led: durable products designed for repair, a refurbished-machine resale program, and investment in efficient motors and battery systems. It does not hold B Corp or major third-party environmental certifications and publishes limited ESG reporting as a private company.

The more public ethical questions are corporate: the 2019 move to Singapore amid James Dyson's Brexit advocacy, the 2024 UK job cuts of roughly 1,000 roles, and a 2023 libel case Dyson lost against Channel 4, whose reporting on Malaysian supplier labor conditions the court found substantially true. The company has since emphasized supplier-audit improvements.

The Singapore relocation remains the defining reputational controversy: moving headquarters out of the UK while publicly supporting Brexit drew accusations of hypocrisy that persist in British media coverage. The 2024 reduction of about a third of the UK workforce intensified it. The failed libel action against Channel 4 in 2023 produced a legal finding that reporting on supplier labor practices was substantially true, a rare courtroom loss over supply-chain ethics. The cancelled 2019 electric car program, though a strategic decision rather than a scandal, wrote off more than 500 million pounds.