Shuo Wang

Shuo Wang was born in China and moved to the United States at 16, arriving without speaking much English. Her mother ran a motorcycle and scooter business, and she set up a stall at a local flea market to help sell them; she has said the experience gave her the product philosophy that “a good product to the right group of people, it will sell itself.”⁠[1][2][3][3][3]

She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she studied mechanical engineering and robotics and earned a Bachelor of Science degree, and where she met her future Deel co-founder Alex Bouaziz; both graduated from MIT in 2014.⁠[4][2][4]

After graduating, Wang co-founded the air purifier maker Aeris Cleantec with MIT classmates and served as its chief technology officer; the company developed air quality systems in China. Aeris was later acquired by iRobot in 2021 for about $100 million.⁠[1][4][3][2]

In January 2019, Wang and Alex Bouaziz joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch with a plan to build a crypto payment platform for content creators; a month later the crypto market crashed, and the two pivoted three times during the ten-week program. They interviewed roughly 200 other companies in their cohort about their needs, found that the recurring pain point was paying international workers, and chose to enter payroll, founding Deel for global hiring, compliance and payroll.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][5][2]

Wang has been chief revenue officer since Deel’s pre-seed round, responsible for the company’s revenue-driving functions. Rather than the reseller model then common among incumbents, Deel built its own legal entities and banking infrastructure country by country; as of July 2026, it operated close to 450 bank accounts across 120 countries.⁠[3][6][3]

With Wang leading its revenue organization, Deel grew annual recurring revenue from $1 million to $100 million in under 20 months. She has said a main reason for Deel’s rapid growth was going global from the start, with teams in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere rather than focusing only on the U.S. market.⁠[4][1][1]

On June 3, 2025, Deel announced that it had reached a $1 billion revenue run rate just over six years after its founding, serving 35,000 customers and 1.25 million workers in more than 150 countries; it had been profitable for nearly three years and grew revenue 75% year over year. The announcement was signed by both co-founders.⁠[7][7][7][7]

On October 20, 2025, Deel announced a $300 million Series E round at a $17.3 billion valuation, co-led by Ribbit CapitalRibbit CapitalRibbit Capital is a venture-capital firm founded in 2012 by Meyer “Micky” Malka and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It began with financial-technology investing and has expanded into AI, commerce and related infrastructure. Its investments include Coinbase, Robinhood and Nubank.Open the full entry with Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry and Coatue ManagementCoatueCoatue is a technology- and innovation-focused investment management firm founded by Philippe Laffont in 1999, operating in both public and private markets. Its current website lists Thomas Laffont as co-founder and chief investment officer of private investments; a Form ADV filed on July 29, 2026, disclosed regulatory assets under management of $92,705,722,582.Open the full entry. At that time, Deel processed $22 billion in payroll annually and served more than 35,000 customers and more than 1.5 million workers in more than 150 countries; it had marked three consecutive years of profitability and, in September, its first $100 million revenue month.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In 2026, Wang led the rollout of AI tools inside Deel: within a week the company expanded access to AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry’s Claude from 100 licenses to all of its roughly 7,000 employees, with engineers using Claude Code and operations and sales teams building automated workflows and sales tools. As of July 2026, Deel had about $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue, served 40,000 clients and processed around two million payroll runs each month.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

Wang has said AI is not only a productivity tool, and that companies are starting to use AI to build better systems and then better companies; she sees Deel’s next step as helping companies manage a mixed workforce of people and AI agents.⁠[3][3][3]

As of October 2026, Deel operates across 150 countries, serves more than 40,000 customers, has surpassed $1.5 billion in revenue at just over seven years old, and is valued at $17.3 billion.⁠[9][9][9]

Deel: Official website: https://www.deel.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuooo/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]