Chime is owned by its public shareholders, but it is controlled by its two co-founders. Chime Financial, Inc. is a US consumer fintech company that has traded on Nasdaq under the ticker CHYM since June 12, 2025. Co-founders Chris Britt and Ryan King hold every share of the company's 20-vote Class B stock, which gave them a combined 65.4% of total voting power as of March 31, 2026, according to the 2026 proxy statement (DEF 14A).
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Economic ownership looks very different from voting control. Venture investors such as DST Global, Crosslink Capital, General Atlantic, and Menlo Ventures each hold large blocks of Class A stock, and DST Global is the largest single holder by share count. None of them comes close to the founders on votes. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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There is also a second question hiding inside "who owns Chime": who holds the money. Chime is not a bank. Member deposits sit at two partner banks, The Bancorp Bank, N.A. and Stride Bank, N.A., as Chime states in its 2025 annual report (Form 10-K). This article covers both layers: the shareholders who own the company and the banks that hold customer funds.
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Chime is a publicly traded company owned by a mix of founders, venture funds, institutions, employees, and retail investors. Ownership is split across two voting classes. Outside investors mostly hold one-vote Class A shares, while the two co-founders hold all of the twenty-vote Class B shares, which gives them control of shareholder votes despite owning a minority of the equity. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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The 2026 proxy statement bases its ownership table on 350,634,768 Class A shares and 32,132,289 Class B shares outstanding as of March 31, 2026. Class B makes up well under a tenth of the share count, yet because each Class B share carries 20 votes, that small block outweighs the entire Class A float on most matters.
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The table below reproduces the main rows of the proxy's beneficial ownership table. Percentages include options and RSUs that vest within 60 days, following SEC rules, so they do not sum neatly.
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Everything outside those rows belongs to mutual funds, index funds, hedge funds, employees, and individual investors who bought CHYM on the open market. The proxy only names holders above the 5% threshold, so it does not list the long tail of institutional owners. Readers who want that detail can check quarterly 13F filings, which report positions as of each quarter end rather than live.
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Chime was founded by Chris Britt and Ryan King, who remain its two largest voting shareholders. Britt runs the company as chief executive and chairman of the board. King, who previously served as chief technology officer, now sits on the board as a co-founder and director. Together they hold every Class B share outstanding. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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The company was founded in 2012, according to the risk factors section of its 10-K. The 2026 proxy lists Britt as "Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Chairman" and King as co-founder and director who previously served as Chief Technical Officer.
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Britt's stake is held mostly through the Britt Living Trust, which holds 14,643,564 Class B shares, plus several family trusts and GRATs, per footnote 1 of the proxy's ownership table. King's position runs through the King Family Trust, with 12,183,739 Class B shares, and more than a dozen smaller family and gift trusts for which he acts as attorney-in-fact. Trust structures like these are common estate-planning tools for founders, and they do not change who votes the shares.
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Other named executives hold Class A stock only. The same proxy lists Matthew Newcomb as chief financial officer, Mark Troughton as president (a role he has held since December 2025 after serving as chief operating officer), and Adam Frankel as general counsel. Each of their stakes rounds to about 1% of Class A or less. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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Chime uses a dual-class structure in which Class A shares carry one vote each and Class B shares carry twenty votes each. Both classes vote together as a single class on most matters. Because the co-founders own all the Class B stock, they control a majority of votes while owning only a small slice of total equity. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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The 10-K spells out the three authorized classes. Class A has one vote per share, Class B has 20 votes per share, and Class C has no voting rights except where law requires. No Class C shares were outstanding at the time of filing. Class C gives the company a way to issue stock for acquisitions or compensation without diluting founder votes.
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The math is simple once the share counts are in hand. With roughly 32.1 million Class B shares at 20 votes each, the founders command about 643 million votes. The roughly 350.6 million Class A shares outstanding at the March 31, 2026 record point carry about 351 million votes. That is how a group owning a single-digit share of equity ends up with about two-thirds of the vote.
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No, at least not under Nasdaq's definition today. The 10-K states that Chime is not considered a "controlled company" under Nasdaq governance rules, because neither founder alone holds more than 50% of voting power. Britt sits at 34.3% and King at 31.1%, so control is shared rather than held by one person. The proxy notes that five of the company's seven directors are independent.
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That could change. The 10-K explains that if one co-founder experiences a "Triggering Event," a Founder Voting Proxy automatically hands voting control over his Class B shares to the other co-founder. If the remaining founder's voting power then tops 50%, Chime could qualify as a controlled company and opt out of some Nasdaq independence requirements. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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Class B is convertible into Class A at any time, one for one, at the holder's option. The founders' super-voting shares also have a sunset. Per the 10-K, all Class B converts to Class A on the earlier of a date chosen by holders of two-thirds of Class B, or once both co-founders have experienced a Triggering Event. Triggering Events include a founder's holdings falling below a set threshold, termination for cause, death, or disability.
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Before going public, Chime was a venture-backed private company funded by firms including DST Global, Crosslink Capital, General Atlantic, and Menlo Ventures. Those investors held preferred stock, which converted into common stock and was reclassified as Class A at the IPO. Several of them still rank among the largest holders.
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The 10-K's equity footnote records that at the IPO closing, all outstanding redeemable convertible preferred stock automatically converted into 258,667,796 shares of common stock, which were then reclassified into Class A. That single conversion accounts for most of the Class A share count that exists today.
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DST Global's position is split across seven fund vehicles, including DST Global VI, L.P. and DST Investments XXI, L.P., according to footnote 12 of the proxy, which draws on a Schedule 13G filed August 14, 2025. General Atlantic's holding, by contrast, sits in a single partnership, General Atlantic (CH), L.P.
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Venture investors often sell down after a lockup ends, so these positions can shrink between proxy filings. The proxy figures describe the picture as of March 31, 2026, not the current day. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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Chime went public in June 2025 through a traditional initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker CHYM. The deal sold Class A shares to new investors, with part of the offering coming from the company and part from existing shareholders who used the IPO to sell some of their stock.
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According to Chime's pricing announcement, the company priced 32,000,000 Class A shares at $27.00 each. Chime sold 25,900,765 of those shares, and selling stockholders sold 6,099,235, with Chime receiving no proceeds from the latter. Trading began June 12, 2025, and the offering was expected to close June 13, 2025. Underwriters also received a 30-day option to buy up to 4,800,000 additional shares.
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The same release names Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan as lead book-running managers. The IPO is the reason Chime now files proxies and annual reports with the SEC, which is what makes a sourced answer to "who owns Chime" possible at all.
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Chime is not a bank. It is a financial technology company that offers checking, savings, and debit products through two partner banks, The Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank. Those banks hold member deposits and provide FDIC insurance. Chime designs the app, manages the customer relationship, and runs the program under contracts with its bank partners.
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Chime says this directly in its filings. The 10-K states that Chime "is a technology company, not a bank," that banking services are provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., and that Chime itself is not a member of the FDIC. It describes both partners as OCC-regulated, FDIC-insured national banks and calls itself a "program manager" for its bank partners.
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This split matters for anyone asking who owns Chime because the shareholders above own the technology company, not the deposits. A member's balance is a deposit at one of the partner banks, not an asset on Chime's balance sheet. The same model underpins most US neobanks, and it is related to the partnerships covered in bank-issued stablecoins and how chartered banks extend their rails to other firms.
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Chime deposits are insured on a pass-through basis. The 10-K explains that funds placed at partner banks, and at banks in a community deposit sweep program, are intended to be insured as if each member had deposited directly at those banks, up to the standard maximum. For that coverage to hold, Chime and the banks must keep accurate records showing each member's actual ownership of funds.
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The filing also flags the limit of that protection. Pass-through insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. It does not cover the failure of Chime or any other non-bank intermediary, because FDIC insurance only applies to insured depository institutions. The 10-K notes that if Chime itself failed, FDIC deposit insurance would not cover losses from that failure.
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Chime does build more of the stack than a pure front end. Member transactions are processed through ChimeCore, a proprietary payment processor and ledger that launched in 2024. Most revenue comes from interchange. The 10-K reports payments revenue of about $1.50 billion and total revenue of about $2.19 billion for 2025, much of it tied to member card spending. How card and account-to-account payments move is covered in payment rails explained.
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Chime is one of the largest consumer fintech companies in the United States by active users. It serves millions of members, most of whom use it as their primary financial account, and it earns the bulk of its revenue from card interchange rather than from fees or interest on loans.
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The 2025 10-K reports 9.5 million Active Members as of December 31, 2025, up 1.5 million, or 19%, year over year. Total revenue rose 31% to about $2.19 billion. The 2026 proxy adds that purchase volume grew 16% year over year to $134 billion.
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Its product lineup, as named in the 10-K, includes Get Paid Early, SpotMe, Credit Builder, the Chime Card, and MyPay. Readers comparing instant-payment options can see how FedNow compares with Zelle, and how the bank-owned operator behind Zelle is structured in what is Early Warning Services.
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Most questions about Chime ownership come down to three points. The public owns most of the equity, the two co-founders control most of the votes, and the partner banks hold member deposits. The answers below address the variations people search for most, using the company's SEC filings as the reference. Source: Chime's 2026 proxy statement.
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Is Chime owned by a bigger bank? No. Chime is an independent public company. The Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank are its banking partners, not its owners, and neither appears as a 5% holder in the 2026 proxy.
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Who is Chime's largest shareholder? By votes, Chris Britt, at 34.3% of total voting power. By share count among outside investors, DST Global entities, at 14.9% of Class A, per the same proxy table.
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Can anyone buy Chime stock? Yes. Class A shares trade on Nasdaq under CHYM, as confirmed in the IPO announcement. Class B shares are not publicly traded.
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Is money in Chime safe if Chime fails? Deposits are held at partner banks with pass-through FDIC coverage, but the 10-K is explicit that FDIC insurance does not protect against the failure of Chime itself.
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This article relies on primary documents only. Ownership percentages, share counts, and voting power come from the beneficial ownership table in the proxy statement, which reports data as of a fixed date rather than in real time. Bank partner, regulatory, and financial details come from the annual report, and IPO terms come from the company's own pricing release.
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Ownership figures are from Chime's DEF 14A filed April 17, 2026, measured as of March 31, 2026. Business, bank partnership, share class, and revenue details are from the Form 10-K for fiscal 2025. IPO terms are from the June 11, 2025 pricing release. Holdings shift as insiders and funds trade, so the next proxy or 13G filing may show different numbers.
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