Who owns Wise? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Wise is one of the few fintech companies that reached the public markets while still profitable, and its ownership structure is where the tension in the business now sits. The money-transfer firm built its brand on transparency, yet its share structure concentrates control in the hands of one founder to a degree most public companies avoid. Understanding who owns Wise means understanding a two-tier voting system that was designed to expire, then was extended, over the objection of the co-founder who helped build it.

The company moved its primary listing from London to New York in 2026, a decision bundled with a vote to keep the founders' supervoting shares alive for another decade. That combination drew opposition from proxy advisers and from co-founder Taavet Hinrikus himself. For a company whose customers hand it billions in cross-border payments, the question of who ultimately controls it is more than a governance footnote.

This article breaks down Wise's ownership: the founders and their stakes, the institutional investors on the register, the dual-class mechanics, and the regulatory and control issues that shape the company. It also traces how the ownership evolved from a 2011 startup to a Nasdaq-listed group carrying $243 billion in annual cross-border volume.

Wise was founded in 2011 in London as TransferWise by Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus, two Estonians who were frustrated by the hidden fees banks charged to move money between currencies. The company rebranded to Wise in 2021. It is headquartered in London and remains incorporated in the United Kingdom.

The core product is cross-border money transfer priced on transparent, low-margin fees rather than marked-up exchange rates. Wise has since expanded into multi-currency accounts, debit cards, business accounts, and an infrastructure arm, Wise Platform, that lets banks and other companies plug into its payment rails. That model puts it in direct competition with banks and with fintech peers like Revolut and Remitly, and it overlaps with the broader payment processing industry that Wise is trying to undercut on price.

For its fiscal year ended March 2026, Wise reported net revenue of about $2.5 billion, up 19% year over year, and income before tax of roughly $660 million. It served around 19 million active customers and processed $243 billion in cross-border volume, a 31% increase. The company remains consistently profitable, a rarity among fintech firms at its scale.

Wise is a public company. It went public through a direct listing on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021, valued at about £8 billion (roughly $11 billion at the time). A direct listing meant existing shares began trading without the company raising fresh capital or using underwriters, which is unusual and reflected the fact that Wise was already profitable and did not need the cash. In 2026, following a shareholder vote, Wise moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq in New York under the ticker WSE, keeping London as a secondary venue.

The two founders remain the most significant individual shareholders. At the 2021 listing, Kristo Kaarmann held roughly 18% to 19% of the company, a stake worth about $2.1 billion at the time, and Taavet Hinrikus held about 10.9%, worth around $1.1 billion. As of 2026 filings, Kaarmann beneficially owned about 18.2% of the Class A ordinary shares. Hinrikus has reduced his holding since the listing as he moved into full-time investing, though his exact current stake is not consistently disclosed. Both men became Estonia's first tech billionaires on the day Wise floated.

The more important number is voting power, not economic ownership. Through the dual-class structure described below, Kaarmann's roughly 18% economic stake translates into voting control near 50%, capped just under that threshold by the company's own rules.

Before going public, Wise raised money across a series of venture rounds and secondary sales. The table below covers the major private-market events. Figures are drawn from contemporaneous reporting.

Baillie Gifford, the Scottish asset manager, first backed the company in 2016 and expanded its position through later rounds, remaining one of the largest institutional holders after the listing.

Andreessen Horowitz led the 2015 Series C and has been one of the most prominent venture backers on the register, adding to its stake in subsequent secondary sales.

Valar Ventures, the fund associated with Peter Thiel, made TransferWise its first European investment in 2013 and stayed involved through the early growth rounds, giving it an outsized role in Wise's early cap table.

Index Ventures, IA Ventures, Seedcamp, and Sir Richard Branson were among the earliest backers, several of them investing before the company had proven its model. Later crossover and public-market investors including BlackRock, Lone Pine Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity, and LocalGlobe joined through the 2019 and 2020 secondary sales.

Wise uses a dual-class share structure. Class A ordinary shares carry one vote each and are the shares that trade publicly. Class B shares carry nine votes each and are held by founders, early employees, and long-term shareholders who elected into a loyalty scheme. This is what converts Kaarmann's minority economic stake into near-majority voting power. To prevent any single holder from crossing full control, the company's articles cap the CEO's exercisable votes just below 50% of eligible votes.

Kristo Kaarmann is the co-founder and chief executive, and the central figure in Wise's control structure. He runs the company day to day and, through the Class B supervoting shares, holds the decisive block of votes. His position makes Wise effectively founder-controlled despite its public status.

Taavet Hinrikus, the other co-founder, was Wise's first employee at TransferWise and served as chairman before stepping back from an operational role. He has since become an active technology investor. Notably, he publicly opposed the 2025 proposal to extend the dual-class structure, arguing it handed too much lasting power to his former partner.

The board is chaired independently and includes a mix of independent non-executive directors alongside the executive team, a standard structure for a listed company. The distinctive feature is not the board's composition but the voting rights that sit outside it, concentrated in the founder class. On paper the board governs; in practice, major decisions requiring a shareholder vote run through a register where the CEO controls close to half the votes.

In October 2024, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority fined Kristo Kaarmann £350,000 for breaching a senior manager conduct rule. The regulator found he failed to notify it of significant tax issues that he had been aware of for more than seven months. The underlying matter dated to 2021, when Kaarmann paid HMRC a fine of £365,651 for deliberately failing to report a capital gains tax liability after selling roughly £10 million of shares in 2017, and was added to a public tax defaulters list. The FCA's penalty would have been £500,000 but for a settlement discount. Both the Wise board and the FCA concluded he remained fit and proper to run the company, but the episode put a spotlight on the governance risk of a founder-controlled firm.

Wise's dual-class share structure was originally set to expire around 2026, which would have collapsed the founders' extra votes into ordinary one-share-one-vote treatment. In 2025, the company asked shareholders to extend the supervoting rights for roughly another decade, into the mid-2030s. Critics objected that the extension was bundled together with the separate, popular proposal to move the listing to the US, making it hard to reject one without the other. Proxy advisers raised governance concerns, and co-founder Taavet Hinrikus called the plan inappropriate and unfair in a letter to shareholders. The resolutions passed comfortably, with Class A shares voting about 91% in favor, but the fight exposed how much control the structure preserves for one person.

The decision to shift the primary listing from London to New York was a blow to the London market, which had held up Wise's 2021 float as a post-Brexit win. The move required High Court approval in the UK, which it received, and took effect in 2026. Supporters argued a US listing would broaden Wise's investor base and better reflect its ambitions. The controversy was less about the destination than about what rode along with it, namely the extended founder voting rights. For shareholders and regulators, the two questions of where Wise lists and who controls it became inseparable.

Wise's ownership structure gives it something most public companies lack, which is a founder who can act with the certainty of near-majority control. That can be an advantage. It lets Kaarmann pursue a long-term, low-margin pricing strategy without pressure to raise fees for a quick profit, the kind of patience that built Wise's reputation in the first place. Long-term shareholders like Baillie Gifford have historically favored exactly this kind of founder alignment.

The flip side is accountability. When one person controls close to half the votes, ordinary shareholders have limited ability to force change, replace management, or block decisions they dislike. The bundling of the listing move with the dual-class extension showed how that concentration can be used to push through governance changes that a fully democratic register might have resisted. Investors buying Class A shares are, in effect, backing Kaarmann's judgment as much as the business.

For customers, the ownership structure is mostly invisible but not irrelevant. Wise holds tens of billions of dollars in customer balances, and the stability of its control matters to the trust that underpins that. A founder-led firm with a consistent strategy can be reassuring, but the FCA fine is a reminder that concentrated control raises the stakes on the conduct of the person holding it.

The move to the Nasdaq changes the competitive frame too. Trading alongside US fintech and payments names, Wise will be measured against a different peer set, and valuation scrutiny will intensify. Anyone weighing that valuation can run the numbers through a business valuation calculator, and anyone mapping Wise against rivals can use a competitive analysis template to see where its transparent-pricing model actually holds an edge.

Kristo Kaarmann is the co-founder and chief executive of Wise. He has led the company since founding it as TransferWise in 2011 alongside Taavet Hinrikus, and through the company's dual-class share structure he holds voting control near 50%.

Yes. Wise went public through a direct listing on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021. In 2026 it moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq under the ticker WSE, while keeping a secondary listing in London under WISE. It was the largest technology listing in UK history when it floated.

Wise was founded in 2011 as TransferWise by Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus, two Estonians living in London. They built the company around transparent, low-cost currency transfers, and both became Estonia's first tech billionaires when Wise listed in 2021.

The founders Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus remain among the largest individual holders, with Kaarmann owning roughly 18% of the Class A shares. Major institutional backers include Baillie Gifford, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, and other funds that invested before the listing. Public-market investors like BlackRock and Lone Pine Capital joined through pre-IPO secondary sales.

Wise raised roughly $1.3 billion across venture rounds and secondary share sales before going public, from a $6 million Series A in 2013 to a $319 million secondary at a $5 billion valuation in 2020. It listed in 2021 at about £8 billion and carried a market capitalization of roughly $12.6 billion in August 2026.

The structure gives founders, early employees, and long-term loyal shareholders Class B shares worth nine votes each, versus one vote for the publicly traded Class A shares. It lets the founders keep control even with a minority economic stake. Originally set to expire around 2026, it was extended into the mid-2030s by a 2025 shareholder vote, a decision that drew opposition from co-founder Taavet Hinrikus and from proxy advisers.