Who owns Opera? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Most people searching for who owns Opera GX are asking about the gaming browser known for its RAM, CPU, and network limiters and its customizable look. Opera GX is not a separate company. It is one of several browsers made by Opera Limited, the same company behind the classic Opera browser, Opera Mini, and the newer Opera Air and Opera Neon. So the answer to who owns Opera GX is the answer to who owns Opera.

Opera began as a Norwegian startup, was sold in 2016 to a Chinese consortium led by Beijing Kunlun Tech and Qihoo 360, and returned to public markets on the Nasdaq in 2018. Since then, Kunlun Tech, controlled by Zhou Yahui, has tightened its grip to more than two-thirds of the shares.

This article breaks down who owns Opera and Opera GX, how Kunlun built control, and why that matters to investors and users.

Opera was founded in 1995 in Oslo by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy, who began building the browser while working at the Norwegian telecom company Telenor. Its first PC browser shipped in 1996, and in 2002 it introduced what the company describes as the world's first full web browser for mobile phones. Today the operating business sits in Opera Norway AS, which is owned by the Cayman Islands holding company Opera Limited.

The product line has widened well beyond one browser. Opera One is the flagship desktop browser. Opera GX, launched in June 2019, targets gamers with a customizable look, controls that cap how much RAM, CPU, and network bandwidth the browser uses, and integrations aimed at a young, highly engaged audience. Opera also runs Opera Mini for data-light mobile browsing, Opera News, the Opera Ads platform, the GameMaker game engine it acquired with YoYo Games in 2021, and the MiniPay digital wallet.

Opera GX is a meaningful piece of that portfolio. It averaged 34 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 37 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 10% year over year. Across all products, Opera averaged 288 million monthly active users in that quarter.

The business earns money in two ways: advertising and search. In 2025, Opera reported revenue of $614.8 million, up 28%, with $396.0 million from advertising and $216.8 million from query (search) revenue. Net income was $108.3 million. Growth continued into 2026: second-quarter revenue rose 25% to $178.1 million, and management raised full-year guidance to $734 million to $742 million. The company employed 605 full-time staff at the end of 2025, about 73% of them in research and development.

Opera is a publicly traded company, but it is not widely held. Its American depositary shares (ADSs) trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, each representing one ordinary share since a December 2024 share consolidation. According to its annual report for 2025, filed in March 2026, Opera had 89,880,513 ordinary shares outstanding, and a single holder controlled 68.0% of them. Buybacks had cut the count to 87,311,171 shares by September 22, 2026, with that holder at 67.9%. That makes Opera a "controlled company" under Nasdaq rules and a consolidated subsidiary of its Chinese parent.

Opera's founders have no disclosed stake in the company today. Von Tetzchner and Ivarsøy built Opera Software ASA, the Oslo-listed company that sold the browser business in 2016 and then renamed itself Otello Corporation. Opera Limited's 2025 annual report does not list either founder as a shareholder, director, or officer.

The individual who matters most is not a founder but a buyer. James Yahui Zhou has chaired Opera's board since July 2016, and his control runs through Kunlun rather than shares held in his own name.

Kunlun's stake is from a Schedule 13D/A filed on September 24, 2026, based on 87,311,171 shares outstanding as of September 22, 2026. Insider stakes are from Opera's 2025 annual report on Form 20-F. Kunlun's 59,280,804 shares consist of 52,546,694 ordinary shares and 6,734,110 ADSs. The 20-F lists no other shareholder with a stake above 5%.

Kunlun Tech Co., Ltd. is a global internet company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange under the code 300418. It holds its Opera shares through a Hong Kong subsidiary. Kunlun is itself controlled by Zhou, who owns 11.3% of it directly and a further 14.8% through Beijing Yingrui Century Software R&D Center L.P., a partnership in which he holds a 54.8% interest and acts as sole general partner. That chain gives Zhou effective command over Opera's majority stake while owning only part of the economic interest in Kunlun.

Kunlun bought control of the dating app Grindr in 2016 and later sold it under pressure from US regulators, as covered in how Grindr's ownership changed hands. Opera, by contrast, has stayed under Kunlun's control for a decade.

At the September 24, 2026 market value of about $1.55 billion, Kunlun's 67.9% stake was worth roughly $1.05 billion.

Kunlun did not always own a majority. After the 2018 IPO, the register had three large holders, and Zhou's control came from combining two of them.

In Opera's first annual report as a public company, filed in 2019, Kunlun Tech Limited held 47.4%, Keeneyes Future Holding, a vehicle wholly owned by Zhou at the time, held 17.7%, and Qifei International Development, a subsidiary of Qihoo 360's parent 360 Security Technology, held 21.2%. Zhou was deemed to control 65.1% through Kunlun and Keeneyes combined.

Two transactions then cleared the way. In October 2022, Opera repurchased all 46.75 million of Qifei's ordinary shares for $128.6 million, ending Qihoo 360's involvement as a shareholder. Because those shares were no longer outstanding, every remaining holder's percentage rose. In October 2023, Keeneyes sold its remaining 6,876,506 ADSs in a secondary offering and left the register. By Opera's 2023 annual report, Kunlun alone held 72.4%.

Kunlun's stake has since edged down to 67.9%, as its share count fell from about 64 million (adjusted for the 2024 consolidation) to 59.3 million. Two mechanisms explain the drop. In December 2024, Kunlun sold 2,442,700 ADSs at $18.46 each to an unaffiliated buyer in a private transaction. Then, in March 2026, it agreed to sell shares back to Opera in proportion to the company's open-market buybacks, starting with 485,874 shares for about $7.4 million at $15.21 each, followed by 665,995 shares in June and 1,134,770 shares in September 2026.

Opera returns cash in a way that benefits Kunlun first. Since July 2023, it has paid a semi-annual dividend of $0.40 per ADS. On February 26, 2026, the board authorized a share repurchase program of up to $300 million over two years. The program buys ADSs on the open market and ordinary shares from Kunlun on a pro-rata basis, which, in the company's words, keeps the public float's percentage ownership unchanged. At about 68% ownership, roughly two of every three dividend dollars flow to Kunlun. Readers who want to test what that cash flow is worth can run the numbers through a discounted cash flow calculator.

James Yahui Zhou is executive chairman. He has chaired Opera's board since July 2016 and served as CEO from then until October 2025, when he moved to executive chairman. He guides strategy, oversees major investments, and decides how resources are allocated. Zhou is the controlling shareholder of Kunlun and chaired Kunlun's board from 2011 to 2020.

Lin Song is chief executive officer and a director. He joined Opera in Oslo in 2002, served as chief operating officer from 2017, as co-CEO from August 2020, and became sole CEO in October 2025. He holds 190,846 shares, about 0.2%.

Frode Jacobsen has been chief financial officer since April 2016 and holds 113,325 shares, about 0.1%.

The board has seven members. Four are Kunlun-linked or executive directors: Zhou, Song, Xiaoling Qian, a Kunlun executive who has managed Kunlun's investment in Opera since 2016, and Tian Jin, chairman of Kunlun's board since July 2020. The other three are independent: Lori Wheeler Næss, a former PwC audit director who chairs the audit committee, Trond Riiber Knudsen, a former McKinsey senior partner who chairs the compensation committee, and James Jian Liu, who chairs the corporate governance and nominating committee.

Confirmed: Kunlun-linked and executive directors hold four of seven seats, and Opera uses controlled-company exemptions, including one that puts a Kunlun executive on the compensation committee. Not disclosed: how often Kunlun directs specific decisions in practice.

Opera's annual report flags its ownership as a risk in its own right. Because Kunlun is a China-based public company and Zhou is a Chinese national, the report notes they are subject to PRC laws and regulators, which could affect Kunlun's ability to exercise control or influence its decisions about Opera. It also warns that geopolitical tension and scrutiny of Chinese-controlled companies could weigh on the ADS price. Separately, Opera's controlled-company status means ADS holders do not get the full set of Nasdaq governance protections, such as a majority-independent board. These are the kinds of exposures a risk register template is built to track.

Opera's search revenue relies heavily on one partner. The 2025 annual report names Google as its largest partner and says a substantial portion of query revenue comes through that relationship. Its largest customer group, which the filing does not name, generated $204.7 million of search and advertising revenue in 2025, about a third of the total. That ties Opera's economics to Google's own search advertising engine, and to any change in how Google pays for default search placement.

In January 2020, short seller Hindenburg Research accused Opera of running predatory lending apps in Kenya, Nigeria, and India, including OKash and OPesa, at rates far above what the apps advertised. Opera denied the allegations, and Hindenburg, as a short seller, stood to gain from a lower share price. In August 2020, Opera announced it would give up majority ownership of its microlending business.

Opera has positioned itself as a challenger to operating-system owners that bundle their own browsers. In July 2025, it filed a complaint with Brazil's competition authority, CADE, arguing that Microsoft uses its control of Windows to push Edge through default settings and design tactics that discourage switching. CADE opened a preliminary inquiry days later; its outcome was not confirmed in the sources reviewed. In the EU, Opera sued the European Commission in July 2024 for exempting Edge from gatekeeper designation under the Digital Markets Act. The General Court dismissed that action on September 2, 2026, though it confirmed Opera had standing to bring it. The dispute pits a $1.5 billion company against a far larger rival with Microsoft's widely held ownership base.

For Opera, majority ownership brings stability and a long time horizon. Kunlun has held control for a decade without activist pressure, which has let Opera fund steady capital returns and niche bets like Opera GX. The trade-off is that strategy ultimately reflects the priorities of one Chinese parent.

For public investors, the deal is mixed. They get a growing, profitable business that pays a dividend and buys back stock, but they own about a third of a company whose board majority answers to its parent. The pro-rata buyback protects the float's percentage while sending a steady stream of cash to Kunlun.

For users, ownership raises a question about data and trust. Browsers see much of what their users do online. Opera is headquartered in Norway, but its controlling shareholder is based in China, and the company itself lists that as a risk. The contrast with Brave's founder-controlled ownership is sharp: a rival browser run by its two founders, with no outside parent. Opera GX users, many of them young gamers, may not know who ultimately controls the browser they use every day.

For the browser market, Opera is a small player next to Chrome, Safari, and Edge, and it depends on a search relationship with Google, whose ownership structure at Alphabet looks nothing like Opera's. Its answer has been to specialize, and a patient majority owner makes those long bets easier to fund.

Opera GX is owned by Opera Limited, the Nasdaq-listed company that makes the Opera browsers. Opera Limited is 67.9% owned by Kunlun Tech, a Shenzhen-listed Chinese internet company controlled by Zhou Yahui. The remaining shares trade publicly.

Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and incorporated in the Cayman Islands, but it is majority owned by a Chinese company. Kunlun Tech has controlled Opera since a consortium it led bought the browser business in 2016, and Opera describes itself as a majority-owned subsidiary of a China-listed parent.

Lin Song has been chief executive officer since October 2025. He joined Opera in 2002 and was co-CEO from 2020 to 2025. James Yahui Zhou, who was CEO from 2016 to 2025, is now executive chairman.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy founded Opera in Oslo in 1995. They have no disclosed stake in, or role at, Opera Limited today.

Yes. Opera's ADSs trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker OPRA and have since July 27, 2018. The stock closed at $17.70 on September 24, 2026, giving Opera a market capitalization of about $1.55 billion on 87.3 million shares outstanding.

Kunlun Tech, through Hong Kong Kunlun Tech Holding Limited, is by far the largest shareholder with 67.9% as of September 22, 2026. No other holder reported a stake above 5% in Opera's 2025 annual report. Qihoo 360 and Zhou's Keeneyes Future Holding were once major holders but exited in 2022 and 2023.