Who owns Roku? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Roku is the company behind the small streaming players, smart TVs, and on-screen home screen that millions of households use to reach Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, and dozens of other apps. It started as a hardware maker. It now makes most of its money as a platform, selling advertising and taking a cut of subscriptions that flow through its operating system.

The ownership question matters because Roku has always been a founder-controlled company. Anthony Wood built it, took it public, and kept voting control through a two-tier share structure that gives his shares ten times the votes of ordinary stock. That arrangement shaped every major decision Roku has made, and it shaped the biggest decision of all: the agreement to sell the company to Fox.

This article breaks down who actually owns Roku today, how the share structure concentrates control in one person, which institutions hold the rest, and what the pending Fox acquisition means for all of them.

Roku was founded in 2002 by Anthony Wood, an engineer and serial entrepreneur who had already built and sold ReplayTV, one of the first digital video recorders. SonicBlue bought ReplayTV, and Wood used proceeds from his earlier ventures to self-fund Roku's early years.

The company's break came from an unlikely partner. In 2007 and 2008, Netflix was building an in-house streaming set-top box. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings decided a hardware business would complicate Netflix's relationships with other device makers, so he spun the project out to Roku and funded it. Wood took a part-time role at Netflix to finish the device while staying Roku's CEO. The first Roku player shipped in May 2008 at $99. That decision by Netflix to hand off the box, rather than build it, is the origin of Roku as an independent company.

Roku is headquartered in San Jose, California. Its business now runs in two parts: a Devices segment that sells streaming players and licenses the Roku operating system to TV manufacturers, and a Platform segment that earns advertising and subscription revenue once those devices are in homes. Roku reported total net revenue of about $1.25 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up 22 percent year over year, and raised its full-year 2026 outlook to roughly $5.5 billion. The Platform business, not hardware, drives almost all of the profit, led by advertising and by The Roku Channel, one of the largest free ad-supported streaming services in the United States, competing with services like Pluto TV and Fox's Tubi.

Roku has been a public company since September 28, 2017, when it priced its IPO at $14 per share, valuing the company at about $1.3 billion. The stock jumped 67 percent on its first day and closed at $23.50. Since then it has traded on the Nasdaq under ROKU.

That public chapter is ending. On June 15, 2026, Fox Corporation and Roku announced a definitive agreement for Fox to acquire Roku. The deal values each Roku share at $160.00, paid as $96.00 in cash plus 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A common stock. The total enterprise value is about $22 billion. Both boards approved it unanimously. Fox says Roku will keep operating as a standalone platform, and the companies expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory review and a Roku shareholder vote. Until it closes, Roku remains a separately listed public company with its own board and cap table.

Roku uses a dual-class share structure. Class A common stock carries one vote per share. Class B common stock carries ten votes per share. Anthony Wood holds a large block of the high-vote Class B stock, which is the mechanism that gives him control.

The gap between economic ownership and voting power is stark. As of September 30, 2024, Wood owned roughly 12.1 percent of Roku's total shares but controlled a majority of the combined voting power, reported at about 56.7 percent. On the record date for the 2025 annual meeting, April 14, 2025, Roku had about 129.5 million Class A shares and 17.1 million Class B shares outstanding. The Class B block is small in share count but heavy in votes.

That control is central to the Fox deal. As of June 15, 2026, stockholders affiliated with Wood, who together held roughly 55 percent of Roku's voting power, signed a voting and support agreement backing the merger. In practical terms, Wood's control meant the sale was his to approve. He has also agreed to an ongoing role at the combined company and a seat on Fox's board.

Before going public, Roku raised roughly $214 million across about ten rounds from around 17 investors. Media and technology strategics were prominent backers, alongside traditional venture and mutual-fund investors. The larger later rounds are shown below.

Other participants across these rounds included Sky (formerly BSkyB), Menlo Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Viacom, Globespan Capital Partners, and Luminari Capital. Netflix was an early backer through the original set-top box spin-off. Reported pre-IPO stakes put Menlo Ventures as the largest venture holder at roughly 35 percent and Fidelity at around 13 percent.

Since the IPO, ownership of Roku's Class A stock has spread across large asset managers. Reported holdings have included entities affiliated with FMR LLC (Fidelity) at roughly 14.8 percent, The Vanguard Group at about 9.2 percent, ARK Investment Management at about 8.7 percent, and BlackRock at about 5.0 percent. ARK, run by Cathie Wood (no relation to Anthony Wood), has been a high-profile long-term holder and at times one of Roku's most vocal bulls.

These stakes are large in economic terms, but the dual-class structure limits their influence. Because Class A shares carry only one vote each, institutions that own most of the float still cannot outvote the founder's Class B block on contested matters.

Anthony Wood is Roku's founder, chairman, and chief executive officer. He has led the company since 2002 and, through his Class B holdings, controls the outcome of any shareholder vote. He is the decisive figure in the company's ownership and in the Fox transaction.

The wider leadership team includes the chief financial officer and the heads of the Platform and Devices businesses, who manage the advertising, subscription, and hardware operations. Roku's board of directors oversees management, but the dual-class structure means the board and the founder are closely aligned by design, since Wood can effectively determine board composition.

After the Fox deal closes, control shifts. Roku would become part of Fox Corporation, which is controlled by the Murdoch family through its own dual-class structure, with Lachlan Murdoch as executive chair and CEO. Wood would join the Fox board and keep an operating role, but ultimate ownership would sit with Fox and its controlling shareholders rather than with Roku's founder.

The pending acquisition is the largest regulatory question facing Roku. Fox would combine its content, its Tubi free streaming service, and its live sports and news with Roku's connected-TV platform and its relationships with more than 100 million streaming households. Regulators will examine whether that combination gives Fox too much control over both content and the distribution layer that carries it. The deal also needs approval from Roku shareholders, though Wood's voting control makes that vote a formality.

Roku's dual-class structure has long drawn criticism from governance advocates. It lets one person override the economic majority of shareholders. Supporters argue it let Wood pursue a long-term platform strategy without pressure to sell hardware at a profit. Critics note that it concentrates the decision to sell the entire company, and to set its terms, in a single founder whose interests may not match those of ordinary shareholders.

Roku's advertising business depends on data about what viewers watch, including automatic content recognition on its smart TVs. That has drawn privacy scrutiny common to connected-TV platforms. Roku has also had public carriage and distribution disputes with large content partners over the years, reflecting its position as a gatekeeper between apps and viewers. Those frictions are part of why owning the platform layer, the prize Fox is paying for, is so valuable and so contested.

Roku's ownership structure explains how a mid-sized hardware company grew into a platform that big media now wants to buy. Founder control gave Anthony Wood room to shift the business away from selling devices at thin margins and toward advertising and subscriptions, a transition that public-market pressure might have cut short. The two-tier share structure was the tool that made that patience possible.

That same control now determines the company's future. Because Wood commands a majority of the votes, the decision to sell Roku to Fox was effectively his to make, and the stockholders aligned with him locked in support the day the deal was announced. Ordinary Class A holders receive the $160.00 per share price, but they were never in a position to shape whether or when a sale happened.

For Fox, the appeal is the platform itself. Roku sits between viewers and the apps they open, it owns the home screen, and it holds first-party data on tens of millions of households. That is the layer traditional media companies have struggled to reach, and it is why Fox is willing to pay about $22 billion for a company whose valuation you can sanity-check with a simple business valuation model. Owning Roku's operating system, not its hardware, is the point of the deal.

For users, the near-term promise is continuity. Fox says Roku will keep running as a standalone platform. The longer-term question is how a neutral distributor behaves once it is owned by a content company that competes with the very apps it carries, from Netflix to services like Peacock. That tension between platform and content owner is the heart of what changes when Roku's ownership moves from its founder to Fox.

Roku is a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq, so it is owned by its shareholders. Founder and CEO Anthony Wood controls a majority of the voting power through high-vote Class B shares, while large institutions such as Fidelity, Vanguard, ARK Investment Management, and BlackRock hold much of the Class A stock. In June 2026, Fox Corporation agreed to acquire Roku, a deal expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Anthony Wood is Roku's founder, chairman, and chief executive officer. He has led the company since he founded it in 2002 and remains its controlling shareholder.

Yes. Roku has traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker ROKU since its IPO on September 28, 2017. It would become part of Fox Corporation if the pending acquisition closes as planned.

Anthony Wood founded Roku in 2002. He had earlier founded ReplayTV, a pioneering digital video recorder, and later built Roku's first streaming player after Netflix spun its in-house box project out to him in 2008.

Anthony Wood is the most powerful shareholder by voting control. Among institutions, entities affiliated with FMR LLC (Fidelity), The Vanguard Group, ARK Investment Management, and BlackRock have been among the largest holders of Roku's Class A stock.

Roku's market value has been around $22 billion to $23 billion in 2026. Fox agreed to acquire the company at $160.00 per share, or roughly $22 billion in enterprise value, in a cash-and-stock deal announced in June 2026.