Who Owns Pinterest? Shareholders, Silbermann’s Super-Votes and Elliott’s $1 Billion Bet

Pinterest is a public company (NYSE: PINS) owned by its shareholders, with BlackRock and activist fund Elliott Investment Management among the biggest economic holders. Control is a different story: holders of its Class B stock, led by co-founder and chair Ben Silbermann, cast about three-quarters of all votes while owning roughly 13% of the shares.

Day to day, the company is run by CEO Bill Ready, who took over from Silbermann in June 2022. Silbermann stayed on as non-executive chair of the board.

Who founded Pinterest, and who runs it now?

Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra launched Pinterest in 2010 as a visual bookmarking site. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2019, and Silbermann ran it as CEO until 2022.

Bill Ready, a former Google commerce executive and PayPal veteran, has been CEO since then and also sits on the board. Silbermann is co-founder and non-executive chair, and Andrea Wishom is lead independent director, according to Pinterest’s 2026 proxy statement.

Who owns Pinterest stock? The largest shareholders

There isn’t one owner in the economic sense. The largest blocks sit with asset managers and one activist investor, based on the most recent filings available:

Two caveats. Vanguard now reports through separate entities after an internal realignment in January 2026, so its total stake is spread across more than one filing. Vanguard Portfolio Management alone held 29.7 million shares (5.07%) at the end of March before trimming to 20.0 million by June.

Silbermann’s number has also moved. His last 13G, for December 2023, showed 38.8 million Class B shares; his Form 4 filed on October 14, 2026 shows 35.2 million held directly and through a family trust. Both figures leave out Class B shares held by SFTC, LLC (8.8 million in the latest filing), in which he disclaims beneficial ownership.

Why Class B shareholders control Pinterest

Pinterest has two share classes. Class A trades on the NYSE and carries one vote per share. Class B mostly belongs to founders and early insiders and carries 20 votes per share, as Silbermann’s own 13G filing spells out.

Using the share counts in Pinterest’s Q2 2026 quarterly report (492,198,008 Class A and 74,115,019 Class B as of July 29, 2026), here’s how the votes break down:

Silbermann’s slice of that is large on its own. The 35.2 million Class B shares in his October 2026 Form 4 carry about 704 million votes, or roughly 36% of the total on July’s share counts. That’s our estimate, not a disclosed figure.

He’s been trimming slowly. Under a trading plan adopted in February 2026, his family trust converts Class B shares to Class A and sells them in batches of 46,875, about 1.5 million shares between June and mid-October.

Pinterest’s share buybacks have quietly increased that concentration. The company cut its Class A count from 585.5 million in February 2026 to 492.2 million by late July, while Class B fell only from 79.7 million to 74.1 million. Fewer public shares means each Class B vote counts for more.

The super-votes do have limits. Pinterest’s 2019 IPO prospectus set Class B shares to convert into Class A seven years after the listing, which fell in April 2026, except for holders who still owned at least half the Class B stock they held before the IPO. A second trigger ties the whole class to Silbermann: all Class B converts 90 to 540 days after his death or permanent incapacity, on a date the board picks.

It’s the same founder-control setup used across big tech. Meta’s two-tier shares, for example, keep Mark Zuckerberg in charge of the company that owns WhatsApp despite his minority economic stake. Not every social app’s ownership turns on share classes, though; for TikTok it’s been shaped by US law and a China-based parent, as our breakdown of who owns TikTok shows.

Elliott’s $1 billion investment

Elliott has backed Pinterest since 2022, and Elliott partner Marc Steinberg sits on its board. On March 3, 2026, Pinterest announced that Elliott affiliates would buy $1 billion of convertible senior notes paying 1.75% a year, due in 2031 and convertible into Class A stock at about $22.72 a share.

If fully converted, those notes would become roughly 44 million Class A shares, about the size of BlackRock’s entire stake. Add Elliott’s earlier 4.8% and it would likely be Pinterest’s largest economic shareholder, as news reports noted at the time. It still wouldn’t control the company, because converted notes become one-vote Class A shares.

The money helped fund a new $3.5 billion buyback authorization. Pinterest spent about $2 billion repurchasing 111 million shares in the first half of 2026, including a $1 billion accelerated buyback that retired 54.8 million shares at an average $18.25.

Put the two moves side by side and the trade-off is clear. The buybacks have already removed 111 million shares, while the Elliott notes could add back about 44 million if converted. That still leaves the share count roughly 67 million lower than at the start of 2026, so every remaining shareholder, Elliott included, owns a bigger slice of the company than before.

Why is Pinterest stock falling?

Pinterest shares hit their lowest level since 2020 in February 2026 after a weak forecast, and were down more than 32% for the year by early March. Investors worried about competition from Instagram, cautious ad budgets and new AI shopping tools from Google and OpenAI.

The business itself has kept growing. Second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 18% to $1.18 billion, and monthly active users hit a record 640 million, though Pinterest posted a $47 million net loss for the quarter. For the third quarter it guided to revenue of $1.19 billion to $1.21 billion, or 13% to 15% growth, a slowdown that keeps investors cautious. The stock closed at $21.23 on October 26, 2026, which puts the company’s value at roughly $12 billion.

Is the owner of Pinterest a billionaire?

Silbermann was counted as a billionaire after the 2019 IPO, when Pinterest’s share price was much higher. At $21.23, the 35.2 million shares in his October 2026 Form 4 would be worth about $750 million. On the 38.8 million in his 2023 13G, the figure would be about $820 million.

That leaves out cash from past share sales and other assets, so his total net worth could be higher. On Pinterest stock alone, though, he’s below the billion-dollar line today, and his steady plan sales are moving him further from it.

Our read: Pinterest is “owned” by Wall Street, but steered by insiders. Index funds and Elliott carry most of the financial risk, while Class B holders, with Silbermann at the front, decide who sits on the board.

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