Mark is the founder of the Ubuntu Project, an enterprise Linux distribution that is freely available worldwide and has both cutting-edge desktop and enterprise server editions and has become very popular.

Mark studied finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town and went on to found Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and Internet privacy. He sold Thawte to US company VeriSign in 1999, and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth Foundation. He moved to London in 2001, and began preparing for the First African in Space mission, training in Star City and Khazakstan.

In April 2002, Mark flew in space as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. Upon returning, Shuttleworth traveled widely and spoke about spaceflight to schoolchildren around the world. He returned to his work in technology, and in 2004 he founded Canonical, which became the parent company of various ventures, most notably Ubuntu. That project created desktop and operating system software for free distribution to computer users, with a special focus on expanding personal computer access in developing countries. Shuttleworth served as CEO of Canonical until 2009, when he stepped down. However, he returned to the post in 2017.

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