Who owns Affirm? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Affirm is one of the defining names in the buy-now-pay-later industry. It lets shoppers split a purchase into installments at checkout, charging simple interest or nothing at all rather than the revolving, compounding rates of a traditional credit card. Its pitch is that it makes money when consumers pay, not when they fail to. That model rode the e-commerce boom to a Nasdaq listing and partnerships with Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, and Apple Pay.

Understanding who owns Affirm means untangling two different things. On paper, the company is widely held by public investors and index funds, like any large Nasdaq stock. In practice, control rests with one person. Max Levchin holds super-voting shares that give him command over roughly 43 to 44 percent of the company's voting power, far more than his economic stake alone would justify.

That gap between ownership and control is the central fact of Affirm's structure. It shapes who sets strategy, how the company weathers the volatile economics of consumer lending, and what public shareholders can and cannot influence.

Affirm was founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell. It grew out of HVF, a startup studio Levchin created after leaving PayPal, which he had co-founded in the late 1990s alongside Peter Thiel and others. Of the four co-founders, only Levchin remained to build and lead the company; he is its Chairman and CEO today.

The company's core product is point-of-sale installment lending. When a shopper checks out at a partner merchant, Affirm offers to break the purchase into fixed payments over weeks or months. Some plans carry simple interest, others are interest-free and subsidized by the merchant. Affirm makes money from merchant fees, interest income, and its Affirm Card, a debit card that lets users pay now or split later.

Affirm reported $3.22 billion in revenue for its fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, up about 38 percent year over year, and roughly $52 million in net income, a rare full-year profit for the company. It processed $36.7 billion in gross merchandise volume across roughly 23 million active consumers. Its business model sits in the same category as how Klarna makes money, its largest global BNPL rival.

Affirm Holdings, Inc. trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker AFRM. It has no parent company and is not a subsidiary of any larger firm. Ownership is split among institutional investors, insiders, and retail shareholders, with institutions holding roughly 70 percent of the freely traded Class A stock. Its market capitalization was near $26 billion in August 2026, down from a pandemic-era peak but well above its IPO valuation. Discounting a lender's future earnings back to a figure like that turns on its weighted average cost of capital, which climbs whenever funding markets tighten.

Affirm uses a dual-class share structure. Class A shares, the ones that trade publicly, carry one vote each. Class B shares carry 15 votes each and are held by early insiders, chiefly Max Levchin. Through his Class B holdings and affiliated trusts and entities, Levchin controlled roughly 43 to 44 percent of the company's total voting power in recent filings, according to Affirm's proxy statements.

That figure matters more than his economic ownership, which is a smaller single-digit-to-low-double-digit share of the company. The super-voting structure lets Levchin, together with other Class B holders, effectively decide matters put to a shareholder vote, from board elections to major transactions. The Class B shares are scheduled to convert automatically into Class A shares on January 15, 2028, unless a trigger event happens first, such as Levchin ceasing to serve the company. After conversion, one-share-one-vote would apply and the founder's outsized control would end.

Before its IPO, Affirm raised roughly $1.5 billion in private capital across several rounds. Exact valuations for the earliest rounds were not always disclosed, and figures below reflect the most widely reported terms.

At the IPO, Affirm sold shares at $49 each, above its marketed range, raising about $1.2 billion. Earlier rounds drew backing from Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and others.

The Vanguard Group is among the largest holders of Affirm's Class A stock, owning roughly 8 percent as a passive index investor. Its position reflects Affirm's inclusion in broad market and index funds rather than any active view on the company.

Capital Research and Management, the manager behind the American Funds, has been reported as one of Affirm's single largest shareholders, holding a high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage of the Class A shares through its Capital World and Capital Research affiliates.

BlackRock and Fidelity (FMR) each hold several percent of the Class A stock, again largely through index and mutual funds. State Street, Geode Capital, and Baillie Gifford round out the list of major institutional holders.

Several pre-IPO venture backers held sizeable stakes at the time of the listing, including Founders Fund at roughly 5.7 percent, Lightspeed at about 6.3 percent, Khosla Ventures near 4.6 percent, and GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, through an investment entity holding about 7.4 percent. Shopify, whose checkout Affirm powers, also took an equity stake. Many of these positions have been reduced or sold since the IPO as venture funds returned capital, but they explain how the cap table was built. Ownership of Shopify itself is covered in who owns Shopify.

Max Levchin is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Affirm, and the single most important figure in its ownership structure. He co-founded PayPal before starting Affirm, and his super-voting Class B shares give him control disproportionate to his economic stake. He sets strategy, chairs the board, and runs day-to-day operations. His technical background, PayPal was built on fraud and risk modeling, shaped Affirm's underwriting-first approach to lending.

Levchin's concentrated control means that, in practice, Affirm's direction reflects his judgment. Public shareholders own most of the economic value of the company but cannot outvote him while the Class B structure remains in place.

Affirm's board includes Levchin as Chairman alongside independent directors drawn from finance, technology, and consumer businesses. Because Class B voting power decides director elections, the board's composition ultimately reflects the preferences of the founder and other insiders rather than the broad base of Class A holders. This is standard for founder-controlled technology companies but is a material governance consideration for outside investors.

Affirm's senior leadership includes a chief financial officer, chief technology officer, and chief revenue officer who manage finance, engineering, and merchant relationships. These executives run the operating business, but strategic and governance authority concentrates at the founder-and-board level given the voting structure.

BNPL lending has drawn growing regulatory attention in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Regulators have moved to treat installment products more like traditional credit, with rules on disclosure, affordability checks, dispute rights, and credit reporting. Tighter rules could raise Affirm's compliance costs and change how its loans are underwritten and marketed. As a public lender, Affirm is more exposed to this scrutiny than smaller private competitors.

Affirm's business depends on consumers repaying installment loans. In periods of economic stress, delinquencies can rise, funding costs can climb, and the securitization markets Affirm relies on to sell its loans can tighten. Critics argue BNPL encourages overspending, especially among younger and lower-income shoppers. The company counters that its underwriting rejects risky transactions in real time and that it does not charge late fees or compounding interest. How that model performs across a full credit cycle remains a live question.

Affirm relies heavily on a small number of large merchant partners. Amazon alone accounted for about 22 percent of gross merchandise volume in fiscal 2025. That concentration creates leverage risk: the loss or renegotiation of a major partnership would materially affect volume. It is the kind of exposure that belongs near the top of any risk register for the business. Affirm has extended and expanded its Amazon and Shopify agreements, but the dependence remains a structural feature of the business.

Affirm's dual-class structure concentrates voting power in Max Levchin. Supporters argue founder control lets a company pursue long-term strategy without pressure from short-term shareholders. Critics note that it limits accountability, since public investors who own most of the economic value cannot force change through the ballot. The scheduled 2028 sunset of the Class B shares is meant to address this over time, but until then the governance imbalance is a standing issue for outside investors.

Affirm's ownership structure determines who bears the risk and who holds the power. Public shareholders own most of the company's economic value and absorb the swings of a stock tied to consumer credit and e-commerce. Yet control of the company sits with Max Levchin through super-voting shares, a split that shapes every strategic decision.

For investors, that means buying into a founder-led company where the founder's vision, and his tolerance for risk, drives the direction. This can be a strength when the founder is a capable operator, as Levchin's track record suggests. It also means that outside capital has limited say if strategy disappoints. The 2028 conversion date is therefore a meaningful marker, because it will eventually rebalance voting power toward the broad shareholder base.

For merchants and consumers, ownership matters because Affirm's incentives flow from its structure. As a public company, Affirm must show growth and, increasingly, profitability, which pushes it toward higher volume through partners like Amazon, Shopify, and Apple Pay. Its dependence on a few large partners gives those partners leverage over pricing and terms, which can shape the deals consumers ultimately see at checkout.

Affirm also sits inside a competitive field where ownership models differ sharply. Its closest global rival is privately held, as detailed in who owns Klarna, while incumbents in payments operate at far larger scale. The way PayPal makes money, through its own installment products and a vast payments network, illustrates the competitive pressure Affirm faces from a company its own founder helped build. Ownership structure influences how each of these players can raise capital, absorb losses, and price risk, and that in turn shapes the wider payment processing industry.

Max Levchin is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Affirm. He co-founded the company in 2012 and has led it ever since. Levchin was previously a co-founder of PayPal. Through super-voting Class B shares, he controls roughly 43 to 44 percent of Affirm's total voting power.

Yes. Affirm Holdings trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker AFRM. It went public in January 2021 at $49 per share, raising about $1.2 billion. Its market capitalization was near $26 billion in August 2026.

Affirm was founded in 2012 by Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell. It grew out of Levchin's startup studio HVF. Of the four, only Levchin stayed to run the company; the others moved on to other ventures.

The largest holders of Affirm's publicly traded Class A stock are institutional investors, including Vanguard, Capital Research and Management, BlackRock, and Fidelity. On voting power, however, Max Levchin holds control through his Class B super-voting shares. Early venture backers such as Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Khosla Ventures, and GIC held significant stakes at the IPO.

Affirm raised roughly $1.5 billion in private funding before its IPO, then about $1.2 billion more in the January 2021 offering. Its last private valuation was around $3 billion in September 2020. It listed at roughly $12 billion, spiked far higher during the 2021 e-commerce boom, and traded at a market capitalization near $26 billion in August 2026.