Affirm Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded company, so no single person owns it outright, but its founder and CEO Max Levchin controls the largest block of votes. Affirm's October 2025 proxy statement (DEF 14A) reports that Levchin held 26,485,472 Class B shares, 65.04% of that class, and 44.41% of Affirm's total voting power as of September 30, 2025. Shopify, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, Capital Research Global Investors, and Capital World Investors round out the list of holders above 5%.
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Who owns Affirm, in short: public shareholders own the economic value, while a dual-class share structure concentrates voting control with insiders. Affirm's fiscal 2026 annual report (Form 10-K) lists 296,881,962 Class A shares and 40,539,294 Class B shares outstanding as of August 21, 2026. The Class B count is small, but each of those shares carries far more votes, which is why the ownership picture and the control picture look so different.
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Affirm is owned by its public shareholders, but control sits with founder Max Levchin through high-vote Class B stock. Large asset managers hold the biggest blocks of ordinary Class A shares, Shopify holds a mix of both classes from a commercial partnership, and directors and executives together command close to half of all shareholder votes. Source: Affirm's 2025 proxy statement.
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The beneficial ownership table in the 2025 proxy is the most complete primary source on Affirm's holders. It measures ownership as of September 30, 2025, against 288,662,184 Class A shares and 40,723,830 Class B shares outstanding on that date. The table below reproduces the principal rows, with every figure taken from that filing.
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Two caveats matter when reading these rows. First, the institutional figures are not a live snapshot. The proxy's footnotes say each fund row is based solely on that holder's most recent Schedule 13G or 13G/A, and those filings date from February 2024 through February 2025. Fund positions move every quarter, so the percentages describe what each manager last reported, not what it holds today. Second, the Shopify row relies on a Schedule 13G that Shopify filed in February 2022, so it reflects Shopify's position as of December 31, 2021.
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Max Levchin owns a small slice of Affirm's Class A stock but most of its high-vote Class B stock, which gives him the single largest share of shareholder votes. His economic stake is modest relative to the whole company, while his voting stake falls just short of a majority on his own.
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According to the 2025 proxy footnotes, Levchin's reported position is spread across several vehicles. He directly held 15,397,650 Class B shares. His holding company, 2012 MRL Investments LLC, held another 10,352,528 Class B shares, over which he has sole voting and investment power. The Levchin 2012 Irrevocable Trust held 735,294 Class A shares and 735,294 Class B shares; the filing notes that Levchin and his spouse can acquire those trust shares but do not vote them. The Class A figure also includes 2,666,668 shares issuable on exercise of stock options he held as of September 30, 2025.
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Those numbers add up to 44.41% of total voting power for Levchin alone, per the same filing. Adding the other 11 directors and executive officers lifts the insider group to 46.80%. Levchin's influence has grown since the IPO. Affirm's January 2021 IPO prospectus (424B4) estimated he would hold approximately 19.8% of voting power immediately after the offering. The 2026 10-K explains the mechanism: when other Class B holders sell or transfer, their shares generally convert to Class A, which increases the relative voting power of holders who keep their Class B stock.
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Levchin's control makes more sense in light of his history as a founder. The proxy's director biography states he has been Affirm's CEO since its founding in 2012 and that Affirm was spun out of 2012 MRL Investments LLC (formerly HVF, LLC), an exploration company he founded in 2011 to build companies around large data sets. The same biography says he co-founded PayPal, where he served as Chief Technology Officer until its sale to eBay in 2003, and helped create Yelp. PayPal later became a standalone public company with its own ownership story, covered in who owns PayPal.
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Affirm has two classes of common stock with identical economic rights but different voting power. Class A shares trade publicly on Nasdaq and carry one vote each. Class B shares are held mostly by insiders and early holders, carry many more votes each, and convert into Class A when transferred in most cases.
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The 2025 proxy states that Class A common stock has one vote per share and Class B common stock has fifteen votes per share, and that the two classes vote together as a single class on all matters. The IPO prospectus adds that each Class B share is convertible at any time into one Class A share and that the classes are otherwise identical except for voting, conversion, and transfer rights.
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The arithmetic explains why Levchin can hold so much sway with a small economic stake. Using the 2026 10-K share counts, the 40,539,294 Class B shares carry roughly 608 million votes at fifteen votes each, compared with roughly 297 million votes for the 296,881,962 Class A shares. Class B stock therefore accounts for about 12% of shares outstanding but about two-thirds of all votes. This is a derived calculation from the filing's share counts, not a figure Affirm itself reports.
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The 10-K also notes that all Class B shares will automatically convert into Class A upon certain events described in Affirm's certificate of incorporation, so the structure is not permanent in every scenario. For ordinary investors, the practical point is simple: buying Class A stock gives economic exposure to Affirm but limited say over board elections and major corporate decisions.
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Shopify is one of Affirm's largest holders because of a commercial partnership, not a passive investment. Affirm granted Shopify warrants in exchange for access to new merchants, and Shopify ended up holding both Class A and Class B shares, which makes it the second-largest voting holder after Levchin.
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Affirm's FY2026 10-K says that in fiscal year 2021 it granted warrants in exchange for the opportunity to acquire new merchant partners through a commercial agreement with Shopify Inc., recognizing an asset of $270.6 million based on the grant-date fair value of the vested warrants. The same filing states that as of June 30, 2026, none of those warrants are outstanding, and that Affirm treats Shopify as a related party because it is a principal owner of more than ten percent of the company's voting interest. Under the agreement, some Affirm platform services are made available to eligible Shopify merchants.
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Shopify's own Schedule 13G, reporting its position as of December 31, 2021, lists 20,297,594 shares of Class A common stock beneficially owned, or 9.3% of the class on an as-converted basis. That total consisted of 10,148,797 Class A shares held directly and 10,148,797 Class B shares convertible one-for-one into Class A. Because Class B stock carries fifteen votes, that position translated into 18.05% of total voting power in the 2025 proxy table. Any later changes to Shopify's holdings would show up in a new 13G amendment or in Affirm's next proxy.
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Amazon has a similar warrant arrangement, though it does not appear among the 5% holders in the proxy. The FY2026 10-K reports that in November 2025, alongside an amended commercial agreement with Amazon, Affirm lowered the exercise price of warrants vesting in February 2026 and after from $100 per share to $63.06 per share. Affirm recognized $199.9 million of sales and marketing expense for Amazon warrant shares that vested in fiscal 2026, according to the same filing. Warrants like these are the mechanism through which large commerce partners can become Affirm shareholders.
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Affirm's largest institutional investors are major asset managers that hold Class A shares for funds and clients. Morgan Stanley, Capital Research Global Investors, Vanguard, and Capital World Investors each reported more than five percent of the Class A class, but their combined voting power is small next to the Class B holders.
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The 2025 proxy attributes 22,115,546 Class A shares to Morgan Stanley, based on a Schedule 13G/A filed February 3, 2025, and notes that the shares are owned or deemed owned by Morgan Stanley Investment Management, its wholly owned subsidiary. Capital Research Global Investors reported 20,251,044 shares and Capital World Investors reported 18,266,583 shares; the filing lists the same Los Angeles address for both. Vanguard reported 19,506,902 shares, per a 13G/A dated February 13, 2024, with sole dispositive power over most of them.
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Taken together, those four managers held roughly 28% of Class A stock by the proxy's percentages, yet their voting power in the same table sums to under 9%. That gap is the dual-class structure at work. Institutional holders can still influence Affirm through proxy votes on non-controlled matters, engagement with management, and share sales, but they cannot outvote the Class B bloc on their own. Source: Affirm's 2025 proxy statement.
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Affirm began as a privately held startup spun out of Max Levchin's holding company, raised capital from venture investors, and became public through a Nasdaq listing. Its ownership shifted from founders and venture funds toward public investors, commerce partners holding warrants, and index and active fund managers. Source: Affirm's 2025 proxy statement.
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Key dates, each drawn from Affirm's SEC filings:

The IPO prospectus shows how concentrated control was at listing. Immediately after the offering, Class B holders were expected to own approximately 93.7% of voting power, and holders from before the IPO about 98.8%. The offering raised $1,205,400,000 in gross proceeds before underwriting discounts, with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs listed first among the underwriters. Since then, Class B conversions and new Class A issuance have shifted voting power toward public shareholders while leaving Levchin with the largest single share.
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Affirm's structure is typical of founder-led fintech companies that went public in the past decade. Founders often keep control through high-vote shares, while public markets supply capital. Other consumer finance brands sit inside larger parent companies or remain private, which produces very different ownership answers. Source: Affirm's 2025 proxy statement.
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Venmo, for example, is not a standalone company at all; it is part of PayPal, which Levchin co-founded, as explained in who owns Venmo. Chime has its own mix of founders and venture backers, covered in who owns Chime. For Affirm, the answer turns on two filings: the proxy statement, which names the holders, and the 10-K, which gives current share counts and explains how the classes interact.
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Readers who want the newest numbers should check Affirm's next DEF 14A, usually filed in the fall ahead of its annual meeting, along with recent Schedule 13G amendments on SEC EDGAR. Those filings update Levchin's stake, the insider group total, and the list of 5% holders. Eco publishes similar ownership explainers for payments companies as part of its support library.
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Every ownership percentage, share count, and voting figure in this article comes from Affirm's own SEC filings or from a holder's Schedule 13G retrieved from EDGAR. Proxy data reflects a fixed record date, so holdings may have shifted since, and derived calculations are labeled as such in the text.
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This article draws ownership percentages, share counts, and voting power only from Affirm's SEC filings retrieved from EDGAR: the DEF 14A filed October 24, 2025 (holdings as of September 30, 2025), the Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, the January 2021 424B4 prospectus, and Shopify's February 2022 Schedule 13G. The Class B share of total votes is a derived calculation from 10-K share counts. Institutional positions reflect each holder's last reported filing and may have changed since.
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