Chris Larsen

Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Ripple at ripple

Reviewed Updated Jun 29, 2026

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Location San Francisco, CA
Last Verified Investment Bluecore Energy (Pre-Seed) — Jul 21, 2026
Social @chrislarsensf
Stage Focus
seed series-a
Sector Focus
crypto blockchain fintech payments climate-tech

Background

Chris Larsen was born in San Francisco in 1960. He earned a B.S. in international business and accounting from San Francisco State University in 1984 and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991. He began his career performing financial audits for Chevron in Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia 1.

In 1992, Larsen and his colleague Janina Pawlowski left a Palo Alto mortgage lender to start their own business, which they relaunched online as E-Loan in 1996 — one of the first internet mortgage lenders in the United States. Under Larsen’s tenure as CEO, E-Loan became the first company to provide consumers their FICO credit scores for free. E-Loan went public in 1999, reached a market value of roughly $1 billion in 2000, and was sold to Banco Popular in 2005 1.

In 2005, Larsen co-founded peer-to-peer lending marketplace Prosper with John Witchel, serving as CEO until March 2012 1. Later in 2012 he co-founded OpenCoin (renamed Ripple Labs in 2013), the company behind the XRP Ledger and Ripple cross-border payment software. Larsen served as Ripple’s CEO until December 2016, when he became Executive Chairman and Brad Garlinghouse took over as CEO 1. Ripple was valued at roughly $40 billion in a November 2025 funding round 1.

Larsen has been a public advocate for financial privacy since the early 2000s, co-founding the coalition Californians for Privacy Now in 2001 1. He sits or has sat on the boards or advisory boards of Credit Karma, Oportun, Qifang, Betable, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) 1.

In January 2024, Larsen disclosed that hackers had drained roughly 213 million XRP — worth approximately $112.5 million — from his personal wallets. He posted on X: “there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not @Ripple) — we were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved.” 3

Stated Thesis

Larsen has not published a formal personal investment thesis. Where he has invested publicly, he describes himself as backing infrastructure — what he characterized in connection with his Yellow Network investment as the protocol layer of crypto trading: “I’m proud to support Yellow Network as it tackles liquidity fragmentation in crypto trading and sets new standards for the rapidly evolving digital asset ecosystem.” 2

He has separately positioned himself as a climate-aware crypto founder. Through the 2022 “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign, which he funded with $5 million in partnership with Greenpeace, Larsen argued that proof-of-work crypto consensus needs to migrate to proof-of-stake, noting “many other miners are repurposing old coal & gas plants and not being responsible stewards of the amount of power they’re increasingly using.” 4

Inferred Thesis

Larsen’s public angel footprint is small — only a handful of post-Ripple investments are independently verifiable — so the analysis below is qualitative rather than statistical.

  • Stage: Predominantly seed / early-stage. The most recent verified investment, Yellow Network, was a $10M seed round led by Larsen in September 2024 2. His Aircela investment was at the early-stage level alongside Maersk Growth and activist investor Jeff Ubben, before any formal priced round was publicly disclosed 5.
  • Sectors: Two clear clusters: (1) crypto infrastructure / financial rails — Ripple itself, Yellow Network’s decentralized clearing layer 2, and historical board roles at Credit Karma and Oportun on the consumer-fintech side 1; (2) climate technology — Aircela (direct-air-capture-to-gasoline) 5 and his $5M backing of the Greenpeace Bitcoin-energy campaign 4. Pattern: he favors “pipes” — clearing, identity, liquidity rails — and bridge-to-climate plays, rather than consumer crypto applications.
  • Check size: Insufficient public data for a reliable range. He led a $10M seed round at Yellow Network on his own, suggesting he can write or syndicate large checks when he sources the deal himself 2.
  • Co-investors: Sample too small to compute frequency. Named co-investors on disclosed deals include Maersk Growth and Inclusive Capital’s Jeff Ubben (Aircela) 5 and Consensys, GSR, MV Global, and Cobo (Yellow Network) 2.
  • Geography & decision style: Headquartered in San Francisco, where he is one of the largest individual political and civic donors 67. No public data on decision speed or follow-on behavior.

Notable gap: Larsen has not built a formalized angel fund or syndicate. His investing activity is intermittent and concentrated in deals where he has a thematic conviction (crypto rails, climate), rather than broad-based fintech exposure.

Portfolio

This table lists only investments and board roles with a primary source. Larsen’s portfolio is small and intermittently active; this is not a representative sample of all activity.

Company Year Stage Source
Bluecore Energy 2026 Pre-Seed 10
Yellow Network 2024 Seed (led, $10M) 2
Aircela 2025 Early-stage / angel 5
Credit Karma ~2008 Board / advisor (former) 1
Oportun ~2005 (founding year) Board (former) 1
Qifang ~2007 (founding year) Board / advisor (former) 1
Betable ~2008 (founding year) Board / advisor (former) 1
Ripple Labs 2012 Co-founder 1
Prosper Marketplace 2005 Co-founder 1
E-Loan 1996 Co-founder 1

In Their Own Words

On the SEC’s case against Ripple, after Judge Analisa Torres’ July 2023 ruling: “We won everything important.” 6

On the SEC’s $2 billion penalty demand: he called it a “press release” and described it as “unhinged government overreach meant to get the message to the industry.” 6

On the SEC under Gary Gensler: “What we’ve had to date has been almost like purposeful chaos by Gensler to kind of crush the domestic industry. That has only empowered sketchier foreign operations. It just doesn’t make any sense.” 8

On Bitcoin mining and energy use, in connection with the 2022 Greenpeace campaign: “many other miners are repurposing old coal & gas plants and not being responsible stewards of the amount of power they’re increasingly using.” 4

On Yellow Network and crypto infrastructure: “I’m proud to support Yellow Network as it tackles liquidity fragmentation in crypto trading and sets new standards for the rapidly evolving digital asset ecosystem.” 2

On San Francisco: “There’s nothing like San Francisco, and you can’t replicate it. It’s such a mix of things.” 7

On his SF State education: “SF State gave me the foundation to start a career, originally in accounting, and those were just really concrete tools. Nothing flashy or fancy. It was just, ‘OK — got a job to do, and I’m going to get that job.’ And I did, by the tools that they gave me.” 9

On the January 2024 hack of his personal XRP wallets: “there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not @Ripple) — we were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved.” 3

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials about working with Chris Larsen as an investor were found during research.

Sources

  1. “Chris Larsen,” Wikipedia, accessed June 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Larsen↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. “Ripple’s Chris Larsen Backs $10M Seed Round in Yellow Network to Address Crypto Trading Challenges,” Yellow.com newsroom, September 17, 2024, accessed June 2026. https://yellow.com/news/ripples-chris-larsen-backs-dollar10m-seed-round-in-yellow-network-to-address-crypto-trading-challenges↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, “Hackers steal $112 million of XRP Ripple cryptocurrency,” TechCrunch, January 31, 2024, accessed June 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/31/hackers-steal-112-million-of-xrp-ripple-cryptocurrency/↩↩

  4. Cheyenne Ligon, “Bitcoiners Scoff at Chris Larsen’s $5M Campaign to Force a BTC Code Change,” CoinDesk, March 29, 2022, accessed June 2026. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/03/29/bitcoiners-scoff-at-chris-larsens-5m-campaign-to-force-a-btc-code-change↩↩↩

  5. “Aircela Launches Machine That Converts Air Into Gasoline, Backed by High-Profile Investors,” mlq.ai, 2025, accessed June 2026. https://mlq.ai/news/aircela-launches-machine-that-converts-air-into-gasoline-backed-by-high-profile-investors/↩↩↩↩

  6. Joe Eskenazi, “Chris Larsen is San Francisco’s top law-enforcement donor. Federal law enforcement wants $2B,” Mission Local, April 2024, accessed June 2026. https://missionlocal.org/2024/04/chris-larsen-ripple-sec-xrp-torres-gensler/↩↩↩

  7. “SF is best investment for Silicon Valley exec Chris Larsen,” San Francisco Examiner, November 10, 2024, accessed June 2026. https://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-is-best-investment-for-silicon-valley-exec-chris-larsen/article_71a847ea-9d57-11ef-881f-7f13388d7154.html↩↩

  8. MacKenzie Sigalos, “Harris PAC’s $1 million contribution from Ripple’s Chris Larsen shows crypto industry warming to VP,” CNBC, October 15, 2024, accessed June 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/kamala-harris-got-1-million-from-ripples-chris-larsen-crypto-warms.html↩

  9. “Alumnus Chris Larsen (B.S. ‘84): From Practicality to Cutting Loose the Lifeboats,” SF State University Development donor profile, accessed June 2026. https://develop.sfsu.edu/chris-larsen-donor-profile↩

  10. “This Uber alum just raised a $10M pre-seed to build portable nuclear energy,” TechCrunch, July 21, 2026, accessed July 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/21/this-uber-alumn-just-raised-a-10m-pre-seed-to-build-portable-nuclear-enegry/↩