Max Li is one of the five co-founders of Airwallex, alongside Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu, Xijing Dai and Ki-Lok Wong. His area in the founding team is design.
The idea came from a coffee shop. Li and Zhang invested in one in Melbourne and found that paying overseas suppliers was slow and costly. Airwallex was founded in Melbourne in 2015, and the five founders put in about $1 million of their own money.
In 2018 the company raised about A$80 million and moved its headquarters to Hong Kong. That year it also turned down an acquisition offer of about $1 billion from Stripe. It became a unicorn in 2019 and was valued at $5.5 billion in November 2021.
In October 2025 Airwallex reached $1 billion in annual revenue and $235 billion in payment volume. In December 2025 it raised $330 million at an $8 billion valuation.