Who owns Hallow? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Hallow is the largest Catholic prayer and meditation app in the world, and it reaches users through a phone app rather than a church, a publisher, or a media network. It offers guided prayer, scripture readings, meditations, and sleep audio, built around a freemium subscription that most people know as Hallow Plus.

The company sits at an unusual intersection. It is a Silicon Valley style venture-backed startup, funded by some of the same investors who bankroll defense and fintech companies, yet its product is centuries-old Catholic devotion. That combination is exactly why the ownership question matters. When people ask who owns Hallow, they are really asking who funded a for-profit prayer app, who controls it, and what those backers expect in return.

This article traces ownership from the three founders who built Hallow to the venture funds and high-profile individuals who now hold equity in it, and it separates what the company has confirmed from what only outside data providers report.

Hallow was founded in 2018 in Chicago, Illinois, by Alex Jones, Alessandro DiSanto, and Erich Kerekes. Jones and Kerekes studied engineering at the University of Notre Dame, and DiSanto studied finance there, and the three built the first version of the app after Jones, a former self-described agnostic, returned to prayer and could not find a digital tool built for it. The app launched publicly in December 2018.

The product is a freemium subscription app. A free tier offers a rotating set of prayers and sessions, and the paid tier, Hallow Plus, unlocks the full library of guided prayer, scripture, examinations, and audio content. Pricing in the United States runs around $9.99 per month or roughly $69.99 per year, with a family plan near $119.99 per year for up to six accounts, discounted student rates, and bulk packages sold to parishes, schools, and dioceses. That subscription model puts Hallow in the same commercial category as consumer apps like Duolingo, even though its content is religious rather than educational.

Hallow is incorporated as a public benefit corporation, a for-profit structure that formally commits the company to a social mission alongside making money. It is privately held and has raised roughly $105 million across its disclosed funding rounds. By mid-2025 the company reported that its community had prayed more than one billion prayers since launch and that the app had passed 23 million downloads across more than 150 countries, milestones that made it one of the most downloaded faith apps ever built.

Hallow has no parent company and is not owned by the Catholic Church, any diocese, or any religious order. It is an independent, privately held company controlled by its founders and its investors. There is no public stock, so ownership is split among the founding team, the venture capital funds that led its rounds, angel investors, employees who hold equity, and a handful of high-profile individual backers.

Because the company is private, it does not publish a shareholder register or exact ownership percentages. The picture below is assembled from funding announcements, investor disclosures, and reputable reporting. It shows who the major owners are, but not the precise size of each stake, which the company has not released.

The three founders remain central owners of Hallow. As is normal for an early-stage startup that has raised multiple venture rounds, the founders would have started with the entire company and then sold portions of it to investors round by round, diluting their combined stake while keeping meaningful equity and, importantly, operational control. Alex Jones as CEO and Erich Kerekes as CTO both remain in senior executive roles, which is a strong signal that the founding team still holds significant ownership and board influence.

What Hallow has not disclosed is the exact founder ownership split, whether any founder holds special voting shares, or how much equity has been set aside for employees. Those details are private. What can be said with confidence is that, unlike a company acquired by a larger parent, Hallow is still founder-led, and the people who built the product still run it.

Hallow has raised money in a series of rounds since 2019, moving from angel and seed capital to institutional venture rounds led by well-known funds. The disclosed rounds are summarized below. Amounts and lead investors are drawn from public announcements; the 2025 round and its valuation are reported by third-party data providers and have not been confirmed by the company.

The three institutional rounds add up to about $102 million, and with earlier angel and seed capital included, Hallow's total disclosed funding is commonly cited at around $105 million. Some data aggregators list a higher cumulative figure near $157 million and a 2025 round, but the company has not publicly announced those, so they should be read as reported rather than confirmed.

General Catalyst led Hallow's Series A. It is one of the larger US venture firms, with a portfolio spanning consumer, health, and enterprise software, and its early lead gave Hallow institutional credibility as it scaled from a niche Catholic app into a mainstream download.

Drive Capital, a Columbus, Ohio firm founded by former Sequoia partners, led the $40 million Series B in November 2021. That round is notable for who joined it. Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, invested personally, and Narya Capital, the venture fund co-founded by now Vice President JD Vance, also participated. Other Series B backers included Teamworthy Ventures, Contrary Capital, Uncork Capital, Susa Ventures, and former Notre Dame investment chief Scott Malpass.

Goodwater Capital, a consumer-technology specialist, led the $50 million Series C in May 2023, joined by Highland Capital and investor Colin Moran. This round closed as Hallow crossed 10 million downloads and became the first religious app to reach the top 10 of the Apple App Store, a commercial milestone that helped justify continued institutional interest.

Alongside the funds, Hallow has attracted individual backers, most visibly actor Mark Wahlberg, who invested in the company and became a public face of its marketing. These individual stakes are small relative to the venture funds, but they carry outsized promotional value.

Hallow is not publicly traded and has not announced plans for an initial public offering. There is no ticker, no market capitalization, and no requirement to file financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ownership changes happen privately through new funding rounds and secondary sales rather than on a stock exchange. That keeps control concentrated among the founders and existing investors and shields the company's detailed financials from public view.

Alex Jones is Hallow's co-founder and chief executive, and he is the most influential single person in the company. He sets strategy, is the public voice of the business, and as a founding shareholder holds one of the largest equity stakes. His personal story, a return to Catholic faith after years away from it, is woven into the company's origin and its marketing, which ties his individual credibility closely to the brand.

Alessandro DiSanto and Erich Kerekes co-founded the company with Jones and remain significant owners. Kerekes serves as chief technology officer, overseeing the engineering behind the app. DiSanto has led growth and operations. Together with Jones, the two co-founders form the core ownership and decision-making group, and their continued presence in senior roles is the clearest sign that the founding team still controls the company.

Hallow does not publish its full board composition, but as a multi-round venture-backed company it almost certainly has a board that includes founders and representatives of its lead investors, typically General Catalyst, Drive Capital, and Goodwater Capital. Venture leads commonly take board seats as a condition of investment. That means the funds do not just hold equity, they hold a formal voice in major decisions such as future fundraising, executive hiring, and any eventual sale or public offering. The exact seat allocation is private.

Hallow's cap table has drawn scrutiny because several of its highest-profile backers are prominent conservative figures. Peter Thiel and Narya Capital, co-founded by Vice President JD Vance, both invested in the Series B, and that has led critics to frame Hallow as politically aligned rather than purely devotional. The company presents itself as focused on Catholic prayer rather than politics, but the identity of its investors is a recurring theme in media coverage and a reputational factor that some users weigh. Thiel is associated with companies well outside the faith category, including defense contractor Anduril.

Because Hallow collects information about deeply personal religious practice, including what users pray for and how often, privacy advocates have questioned how that sensitive data is stored, used, and protected. Religious and health-adjacent data is among the most sensitive categories a consumer app can hold, and any commercial app that gathers it faces heightened scrutiny under privacy laws and from watchdog groups. This is a business and reputational risk rather than a confirmed violation, but it is material for a company whose core asset is user trust. It is the kind of exposure a business would track in a formal risk register.

Hallow's for-profit, venture-backed model has itself been a source of criticism. Some commentators object to a subscription paywall around prayer, describing it as monetizing religious devotion. The public benefit corporation structure is partly a response to that critique, since it commits the company to a stated mission alongside profit. Still, the tension between a faith mission and investor expectations of a return is inherent to the ownership model and is likely to persist.

Hallow leans heavily on celebrity promotion, from Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Roumie to a rotating cast of public figures. That strategy has powered rapid growth, but it also ties the brand to individuals whose reputations the company does not control. When an endorser attracts controversy, some of that attention transfers to Hallow, a risk that grows as the roster of promoters expands.

Ownership shapes what Hallow is and what it will become. Because the company is venture-backed rather than church-funded or bootstrapped, it operates under the expectations that come with institutional capital. Investors like General Catalyst, Drive Capital, and Goodwater Capital did not fund a ministry, they funded a growth company, and they expect the kind of scale, revenue, and eventual liquidity that justifies a venture return. That pressure helps explain Hallow's aggressive marketing, its Super Bowl ads, and its push into schools and parishes.

The founders still holding significant equity and running the company is the counterweight. Founder control means the mission-driven vision that started Hallow is not easily overridden by a single outside investor, and the public benefit corporation structure formalizes that balance. No venture fund appears to hold a controlling stake, so decisions still run through Jones and his co-founders. This is a different setup from a wholly owned brand absorbed into a larger parent, where strategy is dictated from above.

The high-profile individual backers are the most scrutinized part of the structure. Because Peter Thiel and a fund co-founded by a sitting Vice President hold equity, Hallow's ownership is read by some as a political statement rather than a neutral investment. Whether or not that interpretation is fair, it is a real dynamic that affects how parts of the public perceive the app, and it is a direct consequence of who owns the company.

For users, the private, for-profit structure has practical implications. It means Hallow answers to investors and a board rather than to a congregation, that its detailed finances are not public, and that its future, including any sale or public listing, will be decided by its shareholders. The reported valuation near $759 million, if accurate, signals that those shareholders see a large business here, the kind of figure a business valuation calculator helps put in perspective. That commercial ambition is inseparable from the ownership that funds it.

Hallow is a privately held company owned by its three co-founders, Alex Jones, Alessandro DiSanto, and Erich Kerekes, together with the venture capital funds and individual investors that have backed it. Major institutional owners include General Catalyst, Drive Capital, and Goodwater Capital, and individual backers include Peter Thiel, Narya Capital, and actor Mark Wahlberg. It has no parent company and is not owned by the Catholic Church.

No. Hallow is a private company and has no stock on any exchange. It is incorporated as a public benefit corporation and has raised money through private venture rounds rather than a public offering. There is no ticker symbol, and the company has not announced plans to go public. Investors gain exposure only through private funding rounds, unlike a listed subscription company such as Spotify.

Hallow was founded in 2018 by Alex Jones, Alessandro DiSanto, and Erich Kerekes, three University of Notre Dame graduates. Jones, who describes returning to Catholic faith after time away from it, is co-founder and CEO. Kerekes is chief technology officer, and DiSanto has led growth and operations. All three remain with the company.

The largest shareholders are the founders, led by CEO Alex Jones, together with the venture funds that led Hallow's rounds: General Catalyst, Drive Capital, and Goodwater Capital. Other backers include Peter Thiel, Narya Capital, Teamworthy Ventures, Contrary Capital, Uncork Capital, and Mark Wahlberg. Exact ownership percentages are private and have not been disclosed.

Hallow has raised about $105 million across its disclosed funding rounds, including a ~$12 million Series A led by General Catalyst, a ~$40 million Series B led by Drive Capital, and a ~$50 million Series C led by Goodwater Capital in 2023. The company has never confirmed a valuation. Third-party data providers report a post-money valuation near $759 million tied to a 2025 round, but that figure is reported rather than officially confirmed.