Who Owns Netflix? Here's Who Made & Created the Streaming Service (2024)

Netflix is arguably the most popular streaming service at the moment, yet many subscribers don’t know much about it, including who owns it. Does someone really own Netflix? Who founded the streamer, and when? Here’s what you need to know.

Who owns Netflix in 2023?

Netflix is a publicly-traded company, so its shareholders own it.

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No one really “owns” a public company, as ownership is distributed among numerous individual and institutional investors. Among the latter, Vanguard Group Inc. has about 7.5% of the total outstanding shares, making it the largest institutional shareholder. Vanguard Group Inc. is one of the largest asset management companies in the world.

As for the individual investors, Reed Hastings is the largest one. Hastings is a pivotal figure in the company’s history since he’s Netflix’s co-founder, former CEO, and current executive chairman. The American entrepreneur owns about 1.7% of the stake, valued at over $2.4 billion.

Who made Netflix, and who are its founders?

Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded Netflix in 1997.

Over the years, Hastings and Randolph have revolutionized the way people consume television and movies. Initially planned as a DVD rental-by-mail service, Netflix became more and more popular with time. In 2007, it became an online streaming platform, but it wasn’t until 2016 that the company created an authentic global audience thanks to its gradual expansion in over 190 countries. Currently, the company boasts almost 240 million paid subscribers worldwide (numbers from the second quarter of 2023).

As competitors like Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Max, and Prime Video emerged, the streaming landscape became more populated with time. Netflix and the other streamers are currently clashing in the so-called “streaming wars,” a race to add as many streaming subscribers as possible.

For more Netflix-related content, watch the trailer for Dear Child, the streamer’s upcoming twister thriller. Also, here’s the trailer for Pablo Larraín’s film El Conde.