Daniel Ek, the co-founder and CEO of Spotify, doesn’t step into the policymaking spotlight that often. His Swedish music streaming service — one of Europe’s only platform success stories — has other executives, like its legal boss Horacio Gutierrez, who deal with ongoing legislative initiatives. But from last year, Ek has started to use his voice and stature to weigh in on everything from Apple’s app store to funding for European startups, establishing him as a force to be reckoned with well beyond the world of online streaming.

Ek, a Swede who stands shoulder to shoulder with U.S. tech moguls, was a key player in an alliance of app developers, called the Coalition for App Fairness, that picked a fight in September with Apple and Google over how they control the global app industry. The two giants are frequently criticized for treating rivals unfairly in the way they run their app stores and for taking a 30 percent revenue cut. Ek advocated for a “level playing field where companies can access their customers on an equal footing.”

Spotify was handed a win at the end of April, when the Commission concluded after a preliminary investigation that Apple “may distort competition for music streaming services on Apple’s devices.” A formal antitrust probe is ongoing, building on a complaint filed by Spotify in 2019. It pits Ek, along with Commission Executive President Margrethe Vestager, against the iPhone-maker, which is fiercely defending its App Store model.

Ek also started supporting nascent EU tech champions. His investment strategy is in line with the EU’s priorities, funding deep-tech startups deploying advanced technologies like AI or blockchain, as well as startups trying to fight climate change. In September, Ek pledged to invest €1 billion in “deep tech moonshot projects” related to machine learning, biotechnology, new materials and energy.

The Swedish tech pioneer is slowly working his way up from his home country to the wider continent. As of September, Ek is a backer of the Swedish battery producer Northvolt, along with EU innovation vehicles like the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the European Investment Bank (EIB). This spring, Ek also founded the venture capital fund Prima Materia, which brands itself as a “European investment company.”

The music-streaming boss is trying to shape the EU’s tech policy on two fronts: reining in the Silicon Valley giants, while giving the EU’s startups space to grow. After Patrick Collison, the CEO of the Irish fintech giant Stripe, defended the prospects of the European tech sector in a letter to the Economist in June, Ek chimed in to say there was “plenty of low hanging fruit to truly make Europe a better place for business and entrepreneurship.”

Despite his rising prominence, Ek is not without his troubles — or his critics. Spotify still has work to do to make its business model sustainable. The company also drew the ire of human rights advocates after it filed a patent for speech recognition that claimed to recognize “emotional state, gender age or accent” in order to recommend music. In a letter to Ek, digital rights defendants like Access Now argued that that kind of technology could lead to emotion manipulation, discrimination and privacy violations — not exactly European values. Spotify replied it had no plans to implement the technology.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR THIS YEAR: The continuation of the fight over Apple’s App Store model, with the trial against Fortnite-maker Epic Games and in the EU’s upcoming digital competition rules, known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

WHAT’S THEIR SUPERPOWER: Shaping the bloc’s tech policy on two fronts: reining in the U.S.’s champions, while fostering the EU’s.

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