As you might expect, Alphabet's (GOOGL -0.75%) (GOOG -0.70%) largest shareholders are its two co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Between the two, they own a 6% stake in the megacap tech giant.
Beyond those two, Eric Schmidt, who served as CEO from 2001 to 2011, owns a 0.5% stake, worth about $11 billion. But there are some other well-known large shareholders, and some that are less apparent.
Alphabet's largest shareholders
According to regulatory filings, the largest owners of Alphabet stock are companies that operate index funds -- specifically Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. Vanguard, the largest shareholder, owns about 7.3%, and the others own a little less.
This is quite common among public companies. For example, and index-tracking fund like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF must hold Alphabet shares in the proportion it is weighted in the index it follows.
As far as individual investors go, early Alphabet investors L. John Doerr and K. Ram Shriram, both of whom are Alphabet board members, own 0.2% and 0.02%, respectively.
There's a lot we don't know
It's also worth noting that there is a lot about the ownership structure of Alphabet (and most other public companies for that matter) that is more difficult to pin down.
Specifically, we only know how many shares individual investors own if they fall into one or more of these categories:
- They are a key executive or director of the business.
- They own more than 5% of a class of common stock.
- They are a hedge fund manager or are otherwise required to disclose their holdings in a 13-F filing.
- They have chosen to make their investment publicly known, or otherwise have their investment revealed to the public.
In other words, a wealthy individual could own 1% of Alphabet's stock, which would make them the third-largest individual shareholder behind Page and Brin, and the public could have no idea about it.
