TL;DR
Revolut co-founder and CTO Vlad Yatsenko is stepping down in July, moving to a board role. Eight-year engineering veteran Donato Lucia will replace him as the digital bank targets a $200 billion US IPO.
Vlad Yatsenko was Revolut’s first employee. He joined before CEO Nik Storonsky had even launched the company. Storonsky later gave him the title of co-founder, not because he had co-founded the business in the conventional sense, but because, as Storonsky told David Rubenstein earlier this year, “it was easier for him to recruit engineers if he had the title co-founder.”
That pragmatic beginning has now reached its natural conclusion. Yatsenko will step down as chief technology officer on 1 July 2026, moving to a non-executive director role on Revolut’s board, according to Sifted and a company statement.
“I feel content with this decision, as Revolut has grown from a young, ambitious startup into a mature, highly impactful global company,” Yatsenko said.
The successor
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Donato Lucia, Revolut’s current head of technology, will take over the role, which is being renamed vice president of technology. Lucia joined the company in 2018 as a senior software engineer and has spent the past eight years building Revolut’s core banking infrastructure. He was promoted to his current position in April 2025.
The choice signals continuity rather than a change of direction. Lucia is an insider who has been building the systems that underpin Revolut’s expansion, and his appointment suggests the company views its technology leadership challenge as one of scaling what exists rather than rethinking it.
The timing
Yatsenko’s departure comes at a pivotal moment for Revolut. The company is targeting a US IPO that could value it at up to $200 billion, roughly two years from now. Its most recent secondary share sale in November valued it at $75 billion, already making it the most valuable private technology company in Europe.
The financial trajectory supports the ambition. Revolut generated £4.5 billion in revenue in 2025, up 46% year on year, with pre-tax profit of £1.7 billion. It now serves more than 70 million customers across over 100 countries and holds banking licences in the UK, Lithuania, and Mexico. It recently launched a private banking unit and has filed for a US bank charter.
Founder departures ahead of IPOs are common in the tech industry, and Yatsenko’s move to the board rather than a clean exit suggests the transition is amicable. But the timing is also a reminder that the company Yatsenko helped build from a WeWork desk is now a regulated financial institution with serious B2B ambitions and a path to public markets that demands institutional-grade governance.
From startup title to board seat
Storonsky’s candid admission about the co-founder title is revealing, not because it diminishes Yatsenko’s contribution, but because it captures the improvised, whatever-works pragmatism of Revolut’s early years. Yatsenko was employee number one. He built the technology that a $75 billion digital bank now runs on. Whether the title was always technically accurate matters less than the fact that the infrastructure he created still underpins every transaction.
The question for Revolut is not whether it can survive without Yatsenko in the CTO chair. It is whether an eight-year internal promotion is enough to carry the technology organisation through an IPO, a US bank charter application, and the kind of regulatory scrutiny that comes with both. Lucia has the institutional knowledge. Whether he has the mandate to reshape the engineering culture for what comes next is something only the next two years will reveal.
