Who owns 1Password? Ownership structure explained (2026)

For most of its life, 1Password was a rarity in software: a fast-growing company that owned itself. Four founders built the Mac password manager in 2005, ran it profitably, and took no outside money for 14 years. By the time venture capital arrived in 2019, they were handing over a slice of a business that was already worth more than a billion dollars.

That history shapes who controls the company today. Unlike startups that sell large stakes early and dilute their founders down to single digits, 1Password entered its funding era from a position of strength. The rounds that followed were unusually large, but they were growth capital layered onto an already profitable business, not lifelines. Understanding the ownership structure means separating the four founders who built the equity base from the investors who bought into it later.

The stakes are higher now than they were. 1Password has shifted from a consumer password app into an enterprise security company selling what it calls extended access management, and it has spent hundreds of millions acquiring other startups to get there. That transformation, funded partly by investors expecting a return, is why the ownership question matters.

1Password is a password manager and identity security platform built by AgileBits Inc. Dave Teare and Roustem Karimov started the project in 2005 alongside their partners Sara Teare and Natalia Karimova, and the first version, then called 1Passwd, reached Mac users in May 2006. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and remains privately held.

The core product began as a way to store and autofill passwords in a browser. Over two decades it grew into a subscription business selling individual, family, and business plans, and more recently into a broader security suite aimed at companies. Like most modern software vendors, 1Password runs on recurring SaaS subscriptions rather than one-time license sales, which is what gives the company its predictable revenue base.

That base is now substantial. 1Password said it surpassed $400 million in annual recurring revenue in late 2025, up from figures in the low $300 millions a year earlier. The company competes with consumer-focused security brands as well as enterprise identity vendors, and its private status puts it in the same bracket as other independently held security firms such as NordVPN.

1Password is privately held. It has never conducted an initial public offering, and its shares do not trade on any exchange. Ownership sits with its founders, its employees through equity grants, and the venture capital firms that invested from 2019 onward. The parent legal entity is AgileBits Inc.

For the first 14 years, the four founders owned 100 percent of the company. They ran it profitably without raising a dollar of outside capital, which meant no dilution and no investor board seats. That is unusual, and it left the founders with an outsized equity position when institutional money finally arrived.

The exact current split is not public. Private companies do not disclose individual cap-table stakes, and 1Password is no exception. What is known is that the three funding rounds since 2019 diluted the founders collectively, and that in October 2025 the founders sold roughly $100 million of stock in a secondary transaction, including a reported $75 million stake bought by an investment vehicle called the Halo Fund. Secondary sales let early owners take cash off the table without the company going public, so the founders have converted part of their paper wealth into liquidity while retaining meaningful ownership. Precise percentages remain undisclosed.

1Password has raised roughly $920 million across three priced rounds. The table below summarizes the confirmed details.

The $6.8 billion figure comes from the Series C and has not been publicly reset since. Any current mark on the business, whether higher or lower, would be an estimate rather than a confirmed number. Readers who want to see how such valuations are built from revenue and growth can work through a business valuation calculator to understand the mechanics.

Accel is the anchor investor. The venture firm led the 2019 Series A, which was reported at the time as one of the largest single investments in Accel's history, then led the Series B and joined the Series C. That gives Accel a stake across all three rounds and, almost certainly, a board seat.

ICONIQ Growth led the $620 million Series C, the round that set the $6.8 billion valuation. ICONIQ manages capital for wealthy families and technology executives, and its growth arm typically takes large positions in late-stage software companies.

Tiger Global Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners both participated in the Series C, alongside Backbone Angels, a collective of women and non-binary angel investors. The Series C also drew participation from a group of well-known individuals, so the cap table includes angel money beyond the institutional funds.

1Password has openly discussed going public. Company leadership has said it is weighing an IPO in 2026 or 2027 but is not rushing. The hiring of David Faugno, a finance executive who previously helped take other software companies public, and his elevation to CEO, both read as steps toward eventual public-market readiness. As of 2026, no filing has been made and no date has been set.

David Faugno is the chief executive officer. He joined 1Password as co-CEO in November 2024, sharing the role with Jeff Shiner, and became sole CEO in July 2025. Faugno also sits on the board of directors. His background is in scaling and financing high-growth software companies, which aligns with the company's stated interest in an eventual IPO.

Jeff Shiner led 1Password as CEO for roughly 13 years before stepping into the role of executive chair of the board in July 2025. In that seat he focuses on long-term strategy and the company's artificial intelligence work. He remains a central figure in governance despite handing over day-to-day control.

Roustem Karimov is a co-founder who has stayed involved with the company. Dave Teare, the other technical co-founder, stepped back from day-to-day operations years ago. The two founding partners, Sara Teare and Natalia Karimova, were central to forming and running the early company. The board composition beyond Faugno and Shiner is not fully public, but with Accel and ICONIQ Growth holding large stakes, investor representation on the board is expected. Specific investor directors are inferred rather than confirmed.

1Password's private status means it is not subject to the quarterly financial reporting that public companies face. Figures like revenue and valuation surface only when the company chooses to share them or when investors leak them. That limits outside scrutiny of the ownership structure and the returns investors are earning, which is a normal trade-off for a venture-backed private firm rather than a controversy in itself.

As a company whose entire value rests on safeguarding customer credentials, 1Password carries reputational and regulatory risk that goes beyond most software vendors. A serious breach of its vaults would threaten the business directly, and the shift into enterprise identity security raises the stakes further because corporate customers demand compliance guarantees. For any company built on trust, managing that exposure is a board-level concern best tracked with a formal risk register.

The company has spent heavily to reposition itself, acquiring Kolide in 2024, Trelica in 2024, and Apono in 2026. Integrating three separate teams across Boston, London, New York, and Tel Aviv carries execution risk, and the Apono deal alone was reported at $250 million to $300 million. Investors funding this strategy expect it to produce a larger, more defensible enterprise business, but the returns are not yet proven.

The bootstrapped origin is the single most important fact about 1Password's ownership. Because the founders owned the entire company outright before raising a cent, they negotiated their funding rounds from unusual strength. Investors bought minority stakes in a profitable, growing business rather than funding an unproven startup. That dynamic gave the founders more control and better terms than most venture-backed companies enjoy, and it explains why they could later sell $100 million of stock in a secondary while remaining significant owners.

For investors, the ownership structure concentrates influence in a small number of large backers. Accel and ICONIQ Growth together hold the most significant institutional positions, and their presence signals an expectation of a liquidity event, most likely an IPO or acquisition, that would let them realize a return on the $6.8 billion valuation they helped set. The move toward public-market readiness under a finance-oriented CEO is consistent with that goal.

For customers, private ownership has meant stability. Without public shareholders demanding quarterly growth, 1Password has been able to invest in long product cycles and make large acquisitions without the short-term pressure a listed company faces. That independence resembles the model other privately held security firms use, including the way Proton structures itself around long-term user trust rather than shareholder returns. The trade-off is less transparency, and an eventual IPO would change that calculus by introducing public accountability. The same tension shows up at other founder-led, venture-backed software companies such as Docker, where outside capital and founder control have to be balanced.

David Faugno is the CEO of 1Password. He joined as co-CEO in November 2024 and became sole chief executive in July 2025, when longtime CEO Jeff Shiner moved to the role of executive chair of the board.

No. 1Password is privately held through its parent company, AgileBits Inc., and its shares do not trade on any stock exchange. Company leadership has said it is considering an IPO in 2026 or 2027 but has not set a date or made a filing.

1Password was founded in 2005 by Dave Teare, Roustem Karimov, Sara Teare, and Natalia Karimova. The four ran the company profitably and entirely on their own for its first 14 years before raising outside capital.

The founders remain significant owners, and the largest institutional shareholders are the venture firms Accel and ICONIQ Growth. Accel led the Series A and Series B rounds and joined the Series C, while ICONIQ Growth led the $620 million Series C. Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Backbone Angels also hold stakes.

1Password has raised roughly $920 million across three rounds: a $200 million Series A in 2019, a $100 million Series B in 2021, and a $620 million Series C in January 2022. The Series C set its valuation at $6.8 billion, the most recent confirmed figure. The company reported surpassing $400 million in annual recurring revenue in late 2025.