Adena Friedman

Adena Friedman has spent nearly a decade transforming Nasdaq from a stock-exchange operator into a global financial technology and market infrastructure platform. In 2025 her efforts paid off: Nasdaq crossed $5 billion in annual revenue for the first time, posting $5.2 billion for the year, up 13% from 2024. The engine behind this growth is its Solutions business, which now accounts for over $4 billion of Nasdaq’s revenue and includes anti-financial-crime solutions, regulatory technology, and AI-powered surveillance tools used by banks and exchanges worldwide. Friedman became the first woman to lead a major global exchange operator when she was appointed CEO in 2017. As Nasdaq celebrates its seventh consecutive year as the No. 1 U.S. listing exchange by proceeds, she has become one of the most influential leaders in global finance. Under her aegis, Nasdaq is deploying AI for core market surveillance, financial crime prevention, data analytics, and index workflow, processing hundreds of billions of messages daily while improving accuracy and speed at scale.