Who Owns Pinterest? Inside the Company's 2026 Ownership Structure

Pinterest looks like a single company from the outside. 

But the reality is that who owns Pinterest sits overlapping against 3 groups: 

Founders, Institutions, and the Public market. 

Ask that question in the middle of 2026, and the picture just shifted.

In April 2026, the deadline written into IPO paperwork of 2019 Vanished. The people who have controlled the company have remained unaffected since its earliest days.

Who owns Pinterest?

Pinterest trades publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PINS, so no single person or entity owns the company outright. 

The Vanguard Group and BlackRock hold the largest blocks of Class A stock, each just above 12 percent. Co-founders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra, though, still control roughly two-thirds of total voting power between them through Class B shares, despite both having stepped back from daily operations years ago.

Who founded Pinterest, and what did they keep?

Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra started the company in 2010, building on an earlier app called Tote. 

Silbermann had spent time at Google before deciding he wanted to build a place for people to collect and organize the things that mattered to them. 

Sharp, trained as an architect at Columbia, designed the grid-based board layout that still defines the product today. Sciarra brought the early operating discipline that got the company through its first funding rounds, then stepped away from an active role in 2012.

Silbermann ran Pinterest as chief executive until June 2022, when he moved to Executive Chairman: a board seat with real influence but no operational duties. 

He remains the company's largest individual shareholder. Per Pinterest's 2026 proxy statement, his Class B holdings give him roughly 35 percent of total voting power, even though his economic stake in the company is a fraction of that. Sciarra, who's had no operational role since 2012, still holds Class B shares worth close to 31 percent of total voting power under the same filing. 

Between them, two founders who no longer run the company control more than two-thirds of every shareholder vote that matters. Worth sitting with that for a second, neither man shows up to the office, and neither has to.

Evan Sharp left his design role in 2022 to join LoveFrom, the studio founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. His remaining Pinterest stake is modest next to Silbermann's and Sciarra's.

The institutional shareholders behind PINS stock

Vanguard and BlackRock own their Pinterest positions almost entirely through index funds. That means their stakes track Pinterest's weight in broad market benchmarks, not a specific bet on the company's shopping and advertising strategy. 

Elliott Investment Management took a different kind of position in 2022, building a stake large enough to push for a change in leadership. It placed Marc Steinberg on the board later that year.

The table below shows the largest holders named in Pinterest's most recent annual proxy filing, alongside their share of total voting power once Class B shares are factored in.

The gap between economic ownership and voting power is the entire story here. 

Vanguard and BlackRock together hold roughly a quarter of the shares outstanding, yet their combined voting power sits under 6%. Silbermann and Sciarra hold a small fraction of the shares outstanding. And still, they control the votes that decide who sits on the board.

The dual-class structure, and the sunset date most coverage missed

Pinterest went public with two classes of stock. 

Class A shares, the ones that trade on the open market, carry one vote each. 

Class B shares, held almost entirely by the founders and early insiders, carry twenty votes each. 

That's why Silbermann and Sciarra can hold a small slice of the economics and still run the board.

The IPO documents are built in a sunset clause. 

Under Pinterest's certificate of incorporation, Class B shares convert automatically into Class A on April 23, 2026,  the seven-year anniversary of the IPO closing, unless a holder still owns at least half of the Class B shares they held immediately before the IPO. 

Silbermann and Sciarra both still hold well over half of their original Class B positions, so the exception applied to them, and the automatic conversion passed without touching their control. 

Regulatory filings from Pinterest confirm both founders continued converting only small tranches of stock for scheduled sales in the months after the deadline. Not the wholesale conversion the sunset clause was designed to eventually force.

That detail matters for anyone trying to answer who owns Pinterest with more than a snapshot; it shows where the company's governance is actually headed. 

The sunset clause was supposed to be the moment super-voting control started fading. Instead, it passed as a formality. And the two founders who no longer manage the company will likely keep outsized influence until they sell down their remaining Class B stakes voluntarily, something recent insider filings show happening only in small, scheduled increments.

Who runs Pinterest day to day?

Bill Ready has been chief executive since June 2022. He came to Pinterest from Google, where he ran the Commerce division overseeing Google Shopping and merchant payments, and before that from Braintree and Venmo under PayPal. 

His appointment marked a clear pivot toward shopping features, merchant partnerships, and AI-driven product recommendations, all aimed at turning Pinterest's planning-stage users into paying customers for advertisers.

Silbermann remains Executive Chairman. The board includes Elliott's Marc Steinberg alongside independent directors with backgrounds in retail, technology, and finance. Sciarra holds no board seat and no operational role, but his voting power means his interests still matter to how the company is governed.

What Pinterest is worth right now

Pinterest shares have traded in a wide range since the 2019 IPO. 

The stock priced at nineteen dollars, climbed above eighty dollars during the pandemic-era surge in 2021, and has since pulled back sharply. As of early July 2026, PINS trades around twenty-two dollars a share, putting the company's market capitalization near twelve and a half billion dollars,  a fraction of the forty-plus billion dollar valuation the stock carried through most of 2025.

Revenue tells a different story than the stock price, though. Pinterest closed 2025 with roughly four point two billion dollars in revenue, up sharply from 2024, and reported over 600 million monthly active users by the end of the year. 

Rising revenue, shrinking market cap,  a gap that reflects broader pressure on digital advertising valuations rather than anything specific to Pinterest's ownership structure.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Pinterest?

Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra founded Pinterest in 2010 in San Francisco. Silbermann served as chief executive until 2022, Sharp led design until his departure the same year, and Sciarra left an operational role in 2012 while retaining a large equity stake.

Does Pinterest have a parent company?

No. Anyone asking who owns Pinterest in the sense of a parent corporation will come up empty. Pinterest is an independent public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PINS, and it's never been acquired by or merged into a larger parent corporation.

Is Pinterest still controlled by its founders?

Founders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra together hold more than two-thirds of total voting power through Class B shares, even though neither holds an operational role at the company. Institutional investors own a larger share of the economics but a much smaller share of the votes.

What happened to Pinterest's dual-class shares in 2026?

A sunset clause in Pinterest's IPO documents called for Class B shares to convert automatically to Class A on April 23, 2026, seven years after the IPO. An exception for holders who kept at least half their original Class B stake meant Silbermann and Sciarra were unaffected, the deadline passed without changing who controls the company's votes.

Who is Pinterest's chief executive?

Bill Ready has served as CEO since June 2022. He previously ran Commerce at Google and served as CEO of Braintree and Venmo under PayPal, replacing co-founder Ben Silbermann, who moved to Executive Chairman.

How much is Pinterest worth today?

As of early July 2026, Pinterest's market capitalization sits near twelve and a half billion dollars, with shares trading around twenty-two dollars, well below the stock's 2021 peak above eighty dollars and below the forty-plus billion dollar valuation it carried through most of 2025.