Ledger
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2014 to present
Pascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger, in the role since 2019. The first chief executive was Éric Larchevêque, from 2014.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pascal Gauthier | Chairman & CEO | 2019 | Present | 7 |
| Éric Larchevêque | Co-founder & CEO | 2014 | 2019 | 5 |
Ledger is the best-known maker of crypto hardware wallets. Exchanges like Coinbase or Binance hold customers' keys on their own servers; a Ledger device keeps the owner's private keys on a Secure Element chip and signs transactions offline. Headquartered in Paris with a manufacturing site in Vierzon and offices in New York, London and Singapore, Ledger has about 850 employees and has sold more than 8 million devices. The company is headquartered in Paris, France.
Ledger makes money in three ways. Hardware: it sells signers such as the Nano S Plus, Nano X, Nano Gen5 ($179), Flex and Stax directly on ledger.com and through retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. Services: the free Ledger Wallet app (renamed from Ledger Live in late 2025) routes buy, sell, swap and staking activity to partners such as MoonPay and Lido, and Ledger earns a share of those fees; it also offers the optional Ledger Recover backup subscription. Enterprise: Ledger Enterprise sells multisig governance and trading tools (Ledger Enterprise Multisig and Tradelink) to banks, asset managers, custodians and stablecoin issuers. Ledger is private and does not publish revenue.
Chairman & CEO
2019 – Present
7 years (current)
Became CEO in April 2019 after serving as President from 2017. Raised the 2021 Series C at about $1.5 billion, launched Stax, Flex and Nano Gen5, renamed Ledger Live to Ledger Wallet, and expanded Ledger Enterprise with a New York office in 2026. Explored, then paused, a US IPO in 2026.
Former Criteo COO who brought scaling and distribution experience; seed investor in Ledger since 2015.
Co-founder & CEO
2014 – 2019
5 years
Éric Larchevêque co-founded Ledger with seven experts in security and cryptography, recognizing that software crypto wallets were fundamentally vulnerable to hacking. He led the commercialization of the Ledger Nano S, the first hardware cryptocurrency wallet powered by a certified Secure Element chip and proprietary BOLOS operating system. The Nano S sold millions of units globally, establishing Ledger as the gold standard for self-custody security.
An engineer from ESIEE Paris, Larchevêque's entrepreneurial leadership established the hardware wallet industry, securing billions in digital asset value.
Ledger's sales track the crypto cycle, and a weak 2026 market led it to pause a planned US IPO. It still carries trust baggage from the 2020 customer database leak (contact details, not keys), the 2023 Ledger Recover backlash, the December 2023 Connect Kit supply-chain attack, and the January 2025 kidnapping of co-founder David Balland, which highlighted physical threats to crypto holders. Competition comes from Trezor, Tangem, BitBox and seedless software wallets.
Ledger has been led by two primary chief executives: co-founder Éric Larchevêque, who served as CEO from inception in 2014 until 2019, and Pascal Gauthier, who has served as Chairman and CEO since 2019.
Éric Larchevêque, a serial tech entrepreneur and founder of Bitcoin center 'La Maison du Bitcoin' in Paris, led Ledger from a small French startup through the launch of the blockbuster Ledger Nano S, establishing Ledger as the global market leader in crypto hardware.
Pascal Gauthier was COO of ad-tech company Criteo. He invested in Ledger in 2015, joined as President in 2017 and became CEO in April 2019.
Under Gauthier, Ledger reached a $1.5 billion valuation, launched Stax, Flex and Nano Gen5, renamed Ledger Live to Ledger Wallet, grew past 8 million devices sold and expanded Ledger Enterprise into New York.
Ledger's leadership includes Chairman and CEO Pascal Gauthier, CTO Charles Guillemet and CFO John Andrews, who joined from Circle in March 2026.
Charles Guillemet, a world-renowned cryptographer who founded the Ledger Donjon, oversees hardware architecture, firmware engineering, embedded cryptography, and global cybersecurity defense across all Ledger products.
Éric Larchevêque left Ledger in 2019 and is now an investor, including on the French TV show 'Qui veut être mon associé ?'.
Leadership operates under the core principle of 'Securing your digital life', committed to empowering individuals with total sovereignty over their financial assets, data, and digital identities through uncompromising hardware cryptography.
Pascal Gauthier serves as CEO, taking over from co-founder Éric Larchevêque in 2019. Gauthier is highly focused on expanding Ledger from a simple hardware company into a massive software ecosystem (Ledger Live). However, he faced massive, absolutely furious backlash from the crypto community in 2023 over "Ledger Recover," a controversial feature that allowed users to back up their seed phrases to the cloud.
Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions
Explore Ledger
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