Who owns Squarespace? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Squarespace is one of the most recognizable brands in website building, a company whose podcast ads and sleek templates helped a generation of small businesses put themselves online. It sells a subscription toolkit for building websites, online stores, scheduling systems, and domains, competing with the likes of Wix, GoDaddy, and Shopify.

Its ownership story is unusual. Squarespace spent nearly two decades as a founder-controlled business, went public through a direct listing in 2021, and then left the public market three years later when a private-equity firm bought it. Few companies travel the full arc from bootstrapped startup to public company and back to private hands, and Squarespace did it while keeping the same founder in the chief executive's chair the entire time.

Understanding who owns Squarespace today means tracing that arc: the venture investors who funded its growth, the public shareholders who briefly owned it, and the private-equity firm that controls it now.

Squarespace was founded in 2003 by Anthony Casalena, then a computer science student at the University of Maryland. He built the first version in his dorm room with a $30,000 loan from his parents and ran it as a one-person operation for years, writing the code, answering support, and handling sales himself. He was the company's only employee until 2006, the year it reached roughly $1 million in revenue.

The company is headquartered in New York City. Its core business is a software-as-a-service platform that lets customers build and host websites without writing code, layered with tools for online commerce, appointment scheduling, email marketing, and domain registration. Customers pay recurring subscription fees, which makes revenue predictable and recurring.

Squarespace crossed $1 billion in annual revenue around 2023 and continued to grow after going private, reaching an annualized revenue run-rate of roughly $1.12 billion by mid-2025. Because it is now privately owned by Permira, it no longer files detailed public financial statements, so recent figures come from reported estimates rather than audited disclosures.

Squarespace is privately held. It was a public company from May 2021 to October 2024, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SQSP. In October 2024, the private-equity firm Permira completed its acquisition of the company and delisted it from the exchange. Squarespace no longer has publicly traded shares.

That makes its current cap table far less transparent than it was as a listed company. Permira controls the business through investment funds it manages, alongside co-investors and rolled-over equity from the founder and management. The exact percentages held by each party are not fully public, which is normal for a private-equity-owned company.

For most of its life, Squarespace was tightly controlled by its founder. When the company went public in 2021, Casalena held a stake worth roughly $2.4 billion, and a dual-class share structure gave him voting power far beyond his economic ownership.

When Permira took the company private, Casalena rolled over the substantial majority of his existing equity rather than cashing out. He remains one of the largest individual shareholders in the private company. The company has not disclosed his precise ownership percentage under the new structure, so the figure is not publicly confirmed. What is confirmed is that he stayed on as chief executive officer and board chair, an unusual degree of continuity through a change in ownership.

Squarespace was bootstrapped for its first seven years. It then raised institutional capital in stages, taking growth equity rather than a long chain of early venture rounds. The table below summarizes its major funding events and the two transactions that changed its ownership.

A direct listing does not raise new money for the company. Existing shareholders sell their shares directly to the public, so Squarespace received no proceeds from the 2021 listing itself. The 2024 take-private, by contrast, was an acquisition: Permira bought out public shareholders for cash at $46.50 per share.

General Atlantic was Squarespace's most important growth backer. It led the 2014 and 2017 rounds and returned in the 2021 round, becoming one of the largest outside shareholders by the time of the public listing.

Accel and Index Ventures co-led the first institutional round in 2010 and remained on the cap table for years. Accel also participated in the 2021 growth round.

Permira is now the controlling owner. It is a global private-equity firm with a long track record in technology and consumer internet businesses, and it holds Squarespace through funds it manages. The 2021 growth round also brought in crossover investors including Dragoneer and Tiger Global, though those positions were largely resolved when the company went private.

Squarespace's time as a public company was brief. Its May 2021 direct listing opened below the $50 reference price and traded softly for much of its public life. In May 2024, Permira agreed to acquire the company for about $6.9 billion, or $44 per share. After some shareholders argued the price was too low, Permira raised its offer to $46.50 per share, lifting the total to about $7.2 billion. The deal closed in October 2024, and Squarespace returned to private ownership.

Anthony Casalena is the central figure. He is founder, chief executive officer, and board chair, and he has led the company continuously since 2003. His rolled-over equity makes him a major shareholder in the private company as well as its operator.

The rest of the leadership team continued in their roles through the buyout, which Permira presented as a feature of the deal. Private-equity owners often replace management; keeping the founder and his team in place signaled confidence in the existing strategy.

The board no longer answers to public shareholders. Under private ownership, control sits with Permira and the funds it manages, working alongside Casalena. Board composition at a private-equity-owned company typically blends the sponsor's partners, the founder, and a small number of independent directors, though Squarespace does not publish a detailed board roster the way a listed company must.

Squarespace's 2021 direct listing was widely described as underwhelming. The stock opened at $48, below its $50 reference price, and fell further in early trading. The soft debut and a lackluster run as a public company set up the argument, three years later, that public markets undervalued the business, which was part of the rationale for going private.

Permira's initial $44 per share offer drew objections from some public shareholders who felt it undervalued the company. The complaints were significant enough that Permira raised the price to $46.50 per share before completing the deal. Take-private transactions led by a controlling founder often attract scrutiny over whether minority shareholders are getting a fair price, and Squarespace's deal was no exception.

While public, Squarespace used a dual-class structure. Class A shares carried one vote each and Class B shares carried ten votes each, and Casalena held enough Class B stock to control a majority of the vote despite owning a smaller share of the economics. Concentrated founder voting power is common among recent technology listings, but it limits the influence of outside shareholders and is a recurring governance concern for index providers and some institutional investors.

Squarespace's 2023 purchase of Google Domains assets moved roughly 10 million domains and their customers onto its platform. Migrations of that scale carry execution risk, and some transferred customers voiced frustration over pricing changes and the forced move to a new provider. The deal expanded Squarespace's domain business substantially, but it also folded in a large base of customers who had not chosen Squarespace themselves.

Ownership shapes how Squarespace is run and who benefits from its growth. As a private-equity-owned company, its priorities now answer to Permira's investment thesis rather than to quarterly public-market expectations. That can free management to invest in longer-term bets, such as artificial-intelligence design tools, without the pressure of reporting to public shareholders every three months. It can also bring pressure to improve margins and cash generation to service the debt that typically funds a leveraged buyout.

For Anthony Casalena, the structure preserves an unusual amount of control. He built the company, took it public, and then partnered with a private-equity firm to buy it back off the public market while keeping his job and a large equity stake. Concentrated founder control is common in modern software, from design platform Canva to workspace maker Notion, but few founders navigate the full public-to-private loop and remain in charge. His continued ownership aligns his incentives with Permira's, since both profit only if the company grows in value before any future sale or relisting.

For customers, private ownership mostly changes what happens behind the scenes rather than the product itself. The bigger practical shifts came from acquisitions like Google Domains, which pulled millions of customers onto the platform, and divestitures like the sale of Tock, which narrowed Squarespace's focus back toward its core website and commerce tools. Understanding who owns the business helps explain those moves: a focused, founder-led company backed by a financial sponsor tends to prune what does not fit and double down on what does, a discipline that shows up clearly in any honest competitive analysis of the website-building market.

For the earlier investors, the arc paid off in stages. Accel, Index Ventures, and General Atlantic funded the growth that carried Squarespace from a bootstrapped tool to a billion-dollar-revenue platform, and the 2021 listing and 2024 buyout gave them opportunities to realize returns. The story is a reminder that a company's owners change over time, and each set of owners leaves a mark on its strategy.

Squarespace is owned by the private-equity firm Permira, which took it private in October 2024 in a deal worth about $7.2 billion. Founder and chief executive Anthony Casalena rolled over most of his equity and remains one of the largest individual shareholders, alongside Permira's funds and co-investors.

Anthony Casalena is the chief executive officer. He founded the company in 2003 and has led it continuously ever since, including through its 2021 public listing and its 2024 return to private ownership, where he also serves as board chair.

No. Squarespace was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SQSP from May 2021, but Permira took it private in October 2024. Its shares no longer trade on any public exchange.

Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace by himself in 2003, building the first version in his University of Maryland dorm room with a $30,000 loan from his parents. He was its only employee for the first few years.

Before it went private, its largest outside backers were General Atlantic, Accel, and Index Ventures. Today, the controlling owner is Permira, with Casalena remaining a major individual shareholder.

Permira valued Squarespace at about $7.2 billion in the 2024 take-private deal, paying $46.50 per share. That was above the roughly $7.4 billion fully diluted value implied by its $50 reference price at the 2021 direct listing, and it followed a 2021 private round that had valued the company at $10 billion.