Stake.com co-founder Edward Craven’s EasyGo Solutions technology firm posts $500m profits

An entity wholly owned by Australia’s youngest billionaire has racked up more than half a billion in profits and paid almost $200m in corporate tax in three years.

Ed Craven’s estimated fortune of $3.86bn makes him Australia’s youngest billionaire.

A local technology firm owned by Australia’s youngest billionaire Edward Craven has made more than $500m in profits in just three years, documents lodged with the corporate regulator reveal.

EasyGoSolutions Pty Ltd, an entity that provides services to Craven and business partner Bijan Tehrani’s global crypto gambling brand Stake.com and the Kick steaming service, made a pre-tax profit of $308m last year alone and paid more than $100m in corporate tax. Its $206m net profit last year would be one of the biggest by a privately-owned Australian business and came after it made net profits of $74m and $76m in 2022 and 2021, documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show.

“The principal activity of the company during the financial year was the development and provision of software for the B2C (business to consumer) wagering market,” a note in the accounts said.

Revenue was more than $500m for the 2023 financial year and the firm’s biggest expense was $134m in employee costs, including $29m in wages and salaries and $92m in performance bonuses that was derived as revenue and then paid as an expense.

The revenue figure also included $311m via a “distribution from partnership”, up from $130m in 2022 and presumably at least some or potentially all Craven’s income from his wider Stake.com business.

Stake founders Bijan Tehrani and Edward Craven unveil Stake's new F1 car.

There are $637m in assets on the EasyGoSolutions balance sheet, including $144m in digital assets such as bitcoin and ethereum and another $166m in receivables from a related party, like Stake.com or an entity related to Craven himself.

Craven, 28, has an estimated fortune worth of $3.86bn, according to The List – Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian, making him Australia’s youngest billionaire.

Stake and Kick are owned by Craven and his American business partner Tehrani, though EasyGoSolutions’ corporate filings with ASIC shows it is solely owned by Craven.

It paid more than $180m in corporate tax in the past three years, the company’s annual reports reveal. Pre-tax profit in 2023 was $308m, following a $122m result in 2022 and $109m in 2021.

The Australian recently revealed that EasyGo, the tech business run by Craven and Tehrani and a separate entity to EasyGoSolutions, is offering sign-on bonuses of up to $100,000 and intends raiding the country’s biggest tech companies including Atlassian and Canva for talent to fuel growth across Craven and Tehrani’s cryptocurrency and gambling empire.

EasyGo is offering salaries of up to “20 per cent more than industry standard” for senior and principal software engineers and engineering managers. It will also pay for interstate relocation costs as the tech talent war intensifies.

EasyGo now has more than 350 employees in Melbourne.

Craven started the Stake.com crypto casino and sports book business with Tehrani in 2017.

Edward Craven plans for Australia's most expensive home in Melbourne’s Toorak.

Because it’s an online gambling platform, the website is banned from operating in Australia, but the firm has made huge profits from hundreds of thousands of punters in unregulated markets around the world.

Stake.com has evolved into one of the biggest gambling entities globally, and in 2022 Craven and Tehrani created another valuable online company, the Kick streaming platform, which is growing quickly and has plans to rival global giant Twitch.

The Stake and Kick brands feature on the cars of Formula 1 team Sauber as part of a sponsorship deal for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

Craven has also attracted headlines for his $80m purchase of the “ghost mansion” in Melbourne’s Toorak, which he has since knocked down and is now building a $145m property that is likely Australia’s most expensive house.