Upwork
American freelance marketplace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Upwork Inc. (formerly Elance-oDesk) is an American freelancing platform headquartered in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California.[2] The company was formed in 2013 as Elance-oDesk after the merger of Elance Inc. and oDesk Corp. The merged company was subsequently rebranded as Upwork in 2015.[3]
- Nasdaq: UPWK
- Russell 2000 component
- S&P 600 component
- 1999 (as Elance)
- 2003 (as oDesk)
- 2013 (as Elance-oDesk)
- 2015 (as Upwork)
 | |
| Type of business | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as |
|
| Founded |
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| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, San Francisco, California U.S. |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founders |
|
| Chairman | Thomas Layton |
| CEO | Hayden Brown |
| Key people | Hayden Brown (CEO) Thomas Layton (chairman) |
| Industry | Freelance marketplace |
| Revenue | US$788 million (2025)[1] |
| Net income | US$115 million (2025)[1] |
| Total assets |  US$1.21 billion (2024)[1] |
| Total equity | US$575 million (2024)[1] |
| URL | www |
| Registration | Required |
History
Elance was founded in 1998 by Bernard Sheth and Srini Anumolu in Jersey City.[4] In December 1999, the company's 22 employees relocated to Sunnyvale, in California's Silicon Valley. Elance's first product was the Elance Small Business Marketplace.[5]
oDesk was founded in 2003 by two friends, Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis, who walked to work together even though one of them was in the U.S. and the other was in Greece.[6][7] Originally created as a staffing firm, oDesk eventually became an online marketplace that allowed registered users to find, hire, and collaborate with remote workers.[8]
In 2009, a hacker breached Elance and obtained the personal details of more than 1.3 million registered users including names, addresses, passwords, and associated email account data.[9]
Elance and oDesk announced their merger on December 18, 2013, to create Elance-oDesk.[10] In 2015, the new company was rebranded as Upwork, which coincided with an upgrade of the oDesk platform under the same name. The newly named Upwork also planned to phase out the Elance platform within a couple of years.[11]
The company was listed on the Inc. magazine 5000 list from 2009 to 2014 and filed for an initial public offering on October 3, 2018.[12][13]
In January 2020, Hayden Brown was appointed CEO of Upwork.[14]
In March 2022, Upwork was named to Time's list of TIME100 Most Influential Companies of 2022.[15]
On March 7, 2022, Upwork started suspending operations for freelancers and clients in Russia and Belarus as a sanction following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[16]
In 2023, job postings related to AI became the fastest growing category on the Upwork platform and the company created an AI services hub to address the increasing activity.[17] In 2025, Upwork partnered with OpenAI.[18]
In 2024, the company introduced "Uma", an AI assistant. The system was built on large language models trained on platform data.[19]
Beginning in 2023, Upwork acquired the AI video conferencing platform Headroom; the search-as-service company ObjectiveAI in 2024; and in 2025 the workforce management company Bubty and Ascen, a compliance and EOR company.[20] In 2025, Upwork created a wholly owned subsidiary, Lifted, to provide services to enterprise clients.[21]
On May 7, 2026, Upwork announced its second layoff of 25% of its workforce within two years.[22][23]
Service and business model
Businesses and individuals connect through Upwork platform to conduct business. Clients post a description of their job and a price range they are willing to pay for a freelancer to complete it. The client may invite specific freelancers to apply for their jobs, or post the job for any freelancer who is interested to apply. Once the client has chosen who they want to complete the job, they hire that freelancer by sending a contract with set hours, pay rate, and a deadline for the work to be completed.[24] Freelancers are also required to purchase "connects" in order to be able to bid for jobs.[25]
Size, scope, and changes
In March 2017, Upwork reported 14 million users in 180 countries with US$1 billion in annual freelancer billings.[26][27]
In 2020, the company purged 1.8 million freelancers.[28][29] In 2019, CEO Hayden Brown said that Upwork would be focusing more on serving the needs of Fortune 500 companies rather than smaller companies just looking for a quick job with a single gig worker. Many of the freelancers purged were rated as "less skilled" or had lower rankings on the platform.[30]