Dax Dasilva is a Canadian tech entrepreneur, author and philanthropist.[1][2] Dasilva founded the e-commerce company Lightspeed in 2005,[3] which went public in 2019 at a valuation of $1.7 billion.[4] He was CEO of Lightspeed for 16 years, until stepping down in February 2022.[5][6] Dasilva was reappointed CEO in 2024. Dasilva is the author of the 2019 book Age of Union about leadership, culture, spirituality, and nature.[7] He is also the founder of two nonprofit organizations; the arts and culture organization Never Apart,[2] and Age of Union Alliance, which funds conservation projects around the world.[7][8][9] In 2025, he was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal after being nominated by the Nature Conservancy of Canada.[10]
Dasilva was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia[9] to parents who had fled the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda as refugees in 1972.[4] Dasilva became interested in computer programming at age twelve, and learned to build program interfaces on an Apple Macintosh given to him by his father.[11] At age thirteen, Dasilva began apprenticing for a software developer.[12]
In 2005, Dasilva founded Lightspeed,[3] a Montreal-based e-commerce company.[14] Dasilva conceived of Lightspeed to assist small independent businesses competing against larger companies.[11][15]
In 2015, when the company had 500 employees, Dasilva moved its headquarters from a warehouse in Montreal’s Mile-Ex neighborhood,[2] to Place Viger.[11] Dasilva took Lightspeed public on the Toronto Stock Exchange[4] in March 2019,[1] described by the Financial Post as the “most successful initial public offering by a Canadian technology company in almost a decade”.[4] He was one of few openly gay leaders of a major Canadian company.[6] In February 2022, Dasilva moved to the role of executive chairman of the board from CEO in order to concentrate on environmental and equality projects for the company.[5] He returned to the position of CEO at Lightspeed[16] in February 2024.[17]
Dasilva authored a book titled Age of Union: Igniting the changemaker that was published in 2019.[1][21] The book, which is partly a memoir,[4] deals with change, leadership, culture, spirituality, and nature.[7]
Dasilva’s second book, Echoes from Eden,[22][23] was published in 2025, with a foreword by Jane Goodall, and recounts his experiences working with conservationists including Goodall, Juma Xipaia, and Kerry Bowman.[24]
Following the movement of Lightspeed’s company headquarters in 2015, Dasilva converted the Mile-Ex warehouse that had previously been its headquarters into a nonprofit cultural and arts space[7] called “Never Apart.”[2] In 2021, Dasilva donated $40 million[8] to found the non-profit “Age of Union”,[7] an organization that focuses on global conservation and climate change efforts,[25] with projects in Canada,[7][26]Peru, Indonesia, and Congo.[7] Dasilva’s Age of Union also funds efforts to protect international marine biodiversity.[9]
In 2023, Dasilva partnered with Jane Goodall and indigenous Amazonian leaders to start a chapter of Goodall’s youth conservationist program Roots & Shoots in Brazil.[27]
In 2025, Dasilva partnered with the conservation group Re:wild[28] on a series of conservation efforts beginning with a $1 million reforestation and anti-poaching project in Madagascar.[29]
Through Age of Union, Dasilva designed a traveling interactive exhibit called the Black Hole Experience, that uses light-absorbing paint, lighting, and a curved video display to simulate the visual and spatial effect of a black hole.[30] Though not directly related to conservation, the exhibit was conceived by Dasilva to help visitors understand their connection to the natural world.[30]
Personal life
Dasilva came out as gay at age fourteen,[2] and has credited the assistance he received at the time from LGBTQ support centers in Vancouver for helping to frame his philanthropic aims.[31] He was an ambassador for Montreal Pride in 2015.[3]
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