Who owns Intuit? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Intuit is one of the most valuable software companies most consumers never think about by name. They know its products instead: TurboTax at tax time, QuickBooks for running a small business, Credit Karma for checking a credit score, and Mailchimp for sending marketing email. Behind those four brands sits a single publicly traded company that has spent more than four decades turning financial paperwork into subscription software.

Ownership of Intuit is straightforward in structure but worth understanding in detail. There is no founder with voting control, no private equity owner, and no dual-class share arrangement of the kind common at younger tech companies. Intuit runs on a single class of common stock, which means economic ownership and voting power line up one to one. That makes its large institutional holders, and its still-present co-founder, the people who matter most.

This article breaks down who owns Intuit: how the shares are split, what stake the founders retain, which institutions hold the largest blocks, and how regulatory pressure over TurboTax and the rise of free government filing shape the risks that ownership carries.

Intuit was founded in 1983 in Palo Alto, California, by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx. Cook had watched his wife struggle with tracking household finances by hand and saw that a personal computer could do the work. Proulx wrote the code for the first product, Quicken, a personal finance program that let people balance a checkbook on a PC.

The company is now headquartered in Mountain View, California. It sells software across two broad groups: business tools led by QuickBooks and Mailchimp, and consumer tools led by TurboTax and Credit Karma. Most of that revenue now arrives as recurring online subscriptions rather than boxed software.

In fiscal 2025, which ended July 31, 2025, Intuit reported revenue of $18.8 billion, up 16 percent from the prior year. Its market capitalization stood near $95 billion in August 2026, with the stock trading around $346. That figure moves with the market, so any precise number is a snapshot rather than a fixed value.

Intuit is a public company. Its shares trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker INTU, and anyone can buy them. There is no parent company, no private equity owner, and no controlling family trust. Intuit also uses a single class of common stock, so one share carries one vote. That is a meaningful detail. It means no founder or insider holds outsized voting power through a special share class, and control tracks economic ownership directly.

Co-founder Scott Cook remains Intuit's most significant individual shareholder. Public filings and Forbes estimates put his holding at roughly 2.5 to 2.7 percent of the company, or around 5.6 million shares, worth close to $2 billion. He holds much of it indirectly through family trusts, and he has sold shares steadily under pre-arranged trading plans in recent years, a common practice for long-tenured insiders.

Cook's stake is large for an individual but small next to the institutions. It does not give him control. What it does give him is a continued personal and financial stake in the company he started, alongside his board seat as chairman of the executive committee. Tom Proulx, the other co-founder, left day-to-day involvement long ago and does not hold a disclosed major stake today.

Intuit is not a venture-backed startup, so it has no cap table of priced funding rounds. It raised outside capital the way public companies do: through its 1993 initial public offering and later stock and debt issuance, much of it tied to acquisitions. The table below traces the financing and deal milestones that shaped today's ownership rather than private venture rounds.

Institutions own the overwhelming majority of Intuit, with estimates placing institutional ownership above 80 percent of shares outstanding. The three largest holders are the same index-fund giants that top most large-cap US registers.

The Vanguard Group is the single largest holder, with roughly 10 percent of shares. Vanguard's stake sits mostly inside its index funds, so it is passive money that tracks the market rather than an activist position.

BlackRock is the second-largest holder, with a stake near 9 percent, again concentrated in index and exchange-traded funds. State Street Global Advisors holds around 4 percent, the third of the "Big Three" index managers. Together these three control close to a quarter of Intuit's stock, though none of them seeks operational control. Their influence shows up mainly in proxy votes on governance and executive pay.

Because Intuit is already public and widely held, there is no pending IPO or ownership event to watch for. The relevant structure is the ordinary one for a mature large-cap: a broad base of institutional and retail holders, a board accountable to them, and a management team whose own equity aligns it with share performance. Insiders as a group, including Cook, hold only a low single-digit percentage of the company.

Sasan Goodarzi is the person with the most operational control over Intuit. He became chief executive on January 1, 2019, and now serves as both chairman and CEO. Goodarzi joined Intuit in 2004, ran several of its major divisions, and has overseen a near-tripling of revenue during his tenure, from about $6 billion to $18.8 billion. He was born in Iran, immigrated to the United States as a child, and holds an engineering degree and an MBA.

Scott Cook, the co-founder, remains on the board as chairman of the executive committee and is still the largest individual shareholder. His role is one of long-term steward and elder statesman rather than day-to-day operator. Brad Smith, who ran Intuit as CEO from 2008 to 2018 and then served as executive chairman, handed the chairmanship structure to Goodarzi over time and has since moved on to lead Marshall University.

The board itself is composed mostly of independent directors, as required for a Nasdaq-listed company. No single director or shareholder holds a controlling block, so major decisions require support from the broad institutional base rather than the assent of any one owner.

The most consequential controversy attached to Intuit concerns how it marketed TurboTax. In May 2022, Intuit agreed to a $141 million settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia to resolve claims that it steered lower-income customers into paying for tax software when they qualified for free filing. The settlement covered roughly 4.4 million customers.

The pressure did not stop there. In January 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a ruling that Intuit had deceptively advertised its TurboTax products as free when many users could not actually file for free. The FTC ordered the company to stop the practice and to disclose clearly when a "free" product carries conditions. Intuit disputed the findings and has challenged the order. The matter is central to Intuit's ownership story because TurboTax is a large profit engine, and any lasting limit on how it can be marketed affects the earnings that underpin the share price.

A second, related pressure comes from the government building its own free filing tool. The IRS launched Direct File as a pilot in 2024, offering some taxpayers a way to file directly with the agency at no cost. That directly threatens the paid tiers of TurboTax. The program's future has been uncertain amid political changes, and Intuit has lobbied heavily against free government filing for years. How this plays out matters to shareholders because free public filing could erode a core consumer revenue stream.

Intuit's two largest deals, Credit Karma and Mailchimp, drew regulatory review over how the company would use consumer financial and marketing data across its products. Both closed, but they left Intuit holding sensitive data on millions of consumers and businesses. That concentration of financial data is a standing regulatory and reputational risk for a company whose value rests on trust.

Intuit's ownership structure shapes how the company behaves. Because it is widely held with a single share class and no controlling owner, management answers to a broad base of institutional shareholders rather than to a founder-controller. That tends to produce steady, returns-focused decision making: predictable capital returns, disciplined margins, and large acquisitions funded by a strong balance sheet rather than founder whim. Investors who want to gauge whether the stock is fairly priced against those earnings can run the numbers through a business valuation calculator.

The absence of a dual-class structure also means the institutions genuinely have a say. When Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street vote their combined quarter of the company on executive pay or board composition, management has to listen. That is a different governance reality from founder-controlled peers where a special voting class can override outside holders.

For customers, ownership matters because the same financial logic that rewards shareholders also drives the marketing tactics that landed Intuit in front of the FTC. TurboTax is a major profit center, and the pressure to convert free users into paying ones flows directly from the company's obligation to its owners. The regulatory scrutiny of that model, alongside the threat of free government filing, sits at the intersection of what is good for shareholders and what is good for taxpayers. Anyone mapping those exposures for a competitor or an investment case can structure them with a risk register template.

Finally, Intuit's ownership of Credit Karma places it alongside a cluster of consumer-finance platforms whose own ownership is worth comparing, from who owns GoodRx in prescription savings to who owns SoFi in lending. On the small-business side, QuickBooks and its payments business compete with Block, the parent of Square, a reminder that Intuit's brands sit inside larger fights over how money moves.

Sasan Goodarzi is the chief executive of Intuit. He took the role on January 1, 2019, and also serves as chairman. He joined Intuit in 2004 and previously led several of its business divisions before becoming CEO.

Yes. Intuit trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker INTU. It first went public in March 1993. It has no parent company and uses a single class of common stock.

Scott Cook and Tom Proulx founded Intuit in 1983 in Palo Alto, California. Cook came up with the idea and Proulx wrote the software for Quicken, the company's first product. Cook still serves on the board as chairman of the executive committee.

The largest shareholders are institutional index managers. The Vanguard Group holds roughly 10 percent, BlackRock about 9 percent, and State Street around 4 percent. Co-founder Scott Cook is the largest individual holder, with a stake of roughly 2.5 to 2.7 percent.

Intuit's market capitalization was near $95 billion in August 2026, with the stock trading around $346 per share. It reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $18.8 billion. Because the share price moves daily, the exact market value changes constantly.

Scott Cook does not own Intuit outright, and he never controlled a majority. He holds an estimated 2.5 to 2.7 percent of the shares, worth close to $2 billion, much of it through family trusts. He remains the largest individual shareholder and sits on the board, but the company is controlled by its broad base of institutional and public investors.