Jack Zhang is the founder and CEO of Airwallex.
Courtesy of Jack Zhang
Jack Zhang, founder and CEO of fintech company Airwallex, doesn’t have the word “burnout” in his dictionary.
“I honestly never understood that terminology. “I worked 100 hours a week for more than 20 years, starting when I was 16,” Zhang said. CNBC Make it.
For Zhang, hard work means survival. At the age of 15, he left his hometown of Qingdao, China and moved alone to Melbourne, Australia in search of better opportunities. He barely spoke English and was living with an Australian host family.
Soon after his arrival, he learned that his parents were in financial trouble in China and had to support himself through university.
“I had two choices: either I go back to China and try to get back into the education system there, or I continue to stay in Australia and figure out how to pay tuition and living (expenses) on my own,” Zhang said. He decided to stay with the latter and did what he could to earn a living.
To study computer science at the University of Melbourne, Zhang worked four jobs: washing dishes in a restaurant during the day, bartending in the evenings, working the night shift at a gas station and picking lemons at a factory in the summer.
Some weeks, he says, he works 80 to 100 hours on top of coursework.
“When you’re … in a tough situation (where) you have to survive, you don’t really think about getting burned. I mean, are you going to survive or not?’ he said.
Not much has changed since then. Zhang, now in his late 40s, still works “easily” 80 hours a week, he said at his fintech firm. As of December 2025, the company is evaluated for 8 billion dollars.
From blue collar to millionaire
After graduating from university in 2007, Zhang ventured into the corporate world. His first job was with an insurance company called Aviva before joining the banking industry.
At the same time, he built several side businesses, from a shipping company that exported olive oils and red wines from Australia to parts of Asia, to a real estate development firm.
His lateral moves have brought success. When he reached the age of 20, money was no longer a problem. However, although he has amassed millions through his business and banking career, Zhang said he has yet to find his true passion.
Everything changed when she had a daughter in her 30s.
“I just remember looking at him and (feeling) like I didn’t do anything to make him proud. And I think at this point, I (decision) is to stop doing these side jobs and quit my full-time job and do something big right,” Zhang said.
“I realized that I always wanted money, but I realized that money alone would not bring (me) the highest level of happiness,” he added. Instead, he said he wanted to build something he was passionate about.
“I’ve always wanted to find something (where) no one should ever wake me up, and … every day I feel very passionate, committed and ready to dedicate my whole life,” Zhang said. So, in December 2015, he left his banking job and started the next chapter of his life.
Airwallex will start
The idea for Airwallex came from one of Zhang’s partnerships, a coffee shop in Melbourne where he works with co-founder and university friend Max Lee.
As part of running this business, the two frequently imported coffee beans and supplies from places like China and Brazil, which required them to remit money overseas. Through this process, they realized how expensive and inefficient cross-border payments and transfers were through the traditional SWIFT system.
“We thought, why can’t we create a payment system parallel to SWIFT and fundamentally change the movement of money around the world?” Zhang said. They wanted to create a solution to facilitate cross-border payments, thus the initial idea for Airwallex was born.
Zhang and Li rallied other friends from the university network to help bring the idea to life: Lucy Liu, Jacob Dai, and Ki-lok Wong. Liu was instrumental early on and invested the first $1 million in the startup.
In late 2015, the group officially established Airwallex. After nearly a decade of 80-hour work weeks, the company folded late last year $1 billion in annual rate return (ARR), which estimates a company’s future annual earnings based on a shorter period of financial data.
“I’m still very excited about what lies ahead for us,” Zhang said. “I think we have a lot of opportunities ahead of us … we think we can (at least) make $10 billion (also) by 2030, which is our next goal post.”
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