Binance is privately held, and U.S. court records identify Changpeng Zhao (CZ) as its owner: the Justice Department's November 21, 2023 plea announcement describes Zhao as "Binance's founder, owner, and CEO." The one outside investor Binance has publicly announced is Abu Dhabi's MGX, which took a minority stake through a $2 billion investment announced by Binance on March 12, 2025.
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No primary source publishes Zhao's percentage. Binance Holdings Limited does not file public ownership tables the way Coinbase or Circle do, so any specific stake figure seen online is a secondary estimate. This page sticks to what the Justice Department, the Office of the Pardon Attorney and Binance itself have put on the record. For listed peers, see who owns Coinbase and who owns Circle.
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Binance is a private company whose ownership is not publicly disclosed in share-level detail. U.S. prosecutors describe Changpeng Zhao as its owner, and a single institutional investor, MGX, holds a disclosed minority stake. No ownership percentage for Zhao, MGX or any other holder appears in a primary source, per justice.gov.
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The operating entity named in the U.S. case is Binance Holdings Limited, which the Justice Department says operates the Binance.com exchange. The same release states that Binance launched in 2017. Because Binance Holdings is not SEC-registered, it has no proxy statement, no 10-K and no beneficial ownership table to consult.
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The most recent primary-source description of Zhao's role in ownership comes from the 2023 U.S. plea resolution, which calls him Binance's owner. Zhao gave up his executive role as part of that resolution. No later filing or company statement found for this page reports a sale of his stake, per justice.gov.
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The DOJ release says Zhao, a Canadian national, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program under the Bank Secrecy Act and "has resigned as CEO of Binance." Stepping down as CEO did not, on the face of the record, change who owns the company. Resigning an executive role and selling equity are separate events, and only the first is documented.
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The Office of the Pardon Attorney lists a pardon for Changpeng Zhao dated October 21, 2025, and records his original sentence as four months' imprisonment and a $50,000,000 fine, imposed April 30, 2024. The pardon listing does not address his ownership position.
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Binance Holdings pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations and agreed to a multibillion-dollar financial penalty. It also agreed to retain an independent compliance monitor for three years. The resolution was coordinated with FinCEN, OFAC and the CFTC, per justice.gov.
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The DOJ release gives the exact figures: forfeiture of $2,510,650,588 and a criminal fine of $1,805,475,575, for a total of $4,316,126,163. The same release states that approximately $1.8 billion would be credited toward the parallel FinCEN, OFAC and CFTC resolutions.
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The release is direct about how prosecutors viewed the link between ownership and control. The Criminal Division's statement in the announcement frames Binance as "the company he founded and ran as CEO." That language is the clearest public statement tying Zhao to both the founding and the running of the business.
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MGX, an Abu Dhabi technology investor, secured a minority stake in Binance through a large cash investment. Neither Binance nor MGX disclosed the percentage. Binance described it as its first institutional investment and said the investment was paid in stablecoin, per binance.com.
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The joint announcement, datelined New York and Abu Dhabi on March 12, 2025, calls the deal MGX's first entry into crypto and blockchain. It quotes MGX Managing Director and CEO Ahmed Yahia and Binance CEO Richard Teng, and notes that Teng previously served as CEO of the Abu Dhabi Financial Services Authority.
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Because the release gives a dollar amount but no percentage or valuation, the stake size cannot be derived from it. Any implied Binance valuation built from that $2 billion figure requires an assumption the primary sources do not supply.
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Binance sits at the opaque end of exchange ownership disclosure. Coinbase and Circle publish SEC beneficial ownership tables with exact share counts. Kraken has filed private-placement notices and a confidential IPO draft. Binance has neither, so its ownership record comes from enforcement documents and press releases, per sec.gov filings for the listed peers.
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More detail on the last row is in who owns Kraken.
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Richard Teng is identified as Binance's chief executive in the company's March 2025 MGX announcement, following Zhao's 2023 resignation. Running the company and owning it are distinct: the top executive title passed to Teng, while no primary source reports a transfer of Zhao's ownership, per binance.com and justice.gov.
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The MGX release also says Binance employs about 1,000 of its roughly 5,000 global staff in the UAE. Management changes after that March 2025 date are not covered by the sources used here.
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This page says less than readers may want, and that is deliberate. Binance publishes no ownership table, the key U.S. description is from 2023, and the group operates through several legal entities. Each of those gaps limits how precisely anyone can answer who owns Binance today.
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First, there is no primary-source ownership percentage for Zhao, so the widely repeated stake figures are not reproduced here. Second, the DOJ description dates from November 2023, per the plea release; a private company can change hands without any public filing.
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Third, Binance operates through multiple legal entities in different jurisdictions. The ownership of Binance Holdings Limited, the entity in the U.S. case, may not match the ownership of every regional affiliate, and no primary source reviewed here maps that structure.
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No. Binance Holdings is private and does not file SEC ownership tables; its ownership record comes from the DOJ plea release and company announcements.
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The Justice Department describes Changpeng Zhao as "Binance's founder, owner, and CEO" in its November 2023 release.
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Yes. The Office of the Pardon Attorney lists a pardon for Zhao dated October 21, 2025.
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$2 billion for a minority stake, per the March 12, 2025 Binance announcement. The percentage was not disclosed.
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Richard Teng, as named in the March 2025 MGX release.
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All claims come from government and company primary sources viewed on September 30, 2026. No ownership percentage was taken from news coverage, rich lists or search summaries. Where a primary source is silent, such as on Zhao's exact stake or MGX's percentage, this page states the gap instead of filling it.