Michael Katchen graduated from the Ivey Business School in 2009. In 2011 he moved to Silicon Valley to join 1000memories, a photo-scanning startup that Ancestry.com bought in 2012.
His friends there had just sold the company and asked how to invest the proceeds. Katchen built a spreadsheet in one night to show ten of them how to buy low-cost ETFs.
Wealthsimple was founded in Toronto in 2014 with Brett Huneycutt and Rudy Adler and raised C$1.9 million that May. It launched Wealthsimple Trade in March 2019, which made trading commission-free in Canada. In March 2020 Trade capped new users because it could not handle the volume.
In May 2021 it raised C$750 million at a C$5 billion valuation. In October 2022 it became the first non-bank approved for a Bank of Canada direct settlement account. In October 2025 it raised C$750 million at C$10 billion and passed C$100 billion in assets under administration. By June 2026 it had about 3.6 million clients and C$156 billion.