Founder Profile
Nathan Gettings
Last reviewed: September 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Background
Nathan Gettings possessed a profoundly rigorous, deeply analytical background in advanced risk management, complex data systems architecture, and massive-scale anti-fraud engineering. Operating as a fiercely capable executive who had successfully built the incredibly advanced security infrastructure at PayPal, this intensely specialized foundation in cyber-defense provided the exact technological leverage required to successfully pioneer the incredibly massive Palantir enterprise.
Founding Story
Nathan Gettings is a highly brilliant American software engineer and a profoundly influential co-founder of the massive Affirm financial empire. Having previously achieved massive success as an early engineer and director of risk at PayPal under Max Levchin, and later serving as a legendary co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Palantir Technologies, Gettings possessed an incredibly elite pedigree in complex anti-fraud systems. In 2012, partnering once again with Levchin, Gettings aggressively launched Affirm with the highly ambitious goal of completely revolutionizing the consumer credit industry. Serving as the company's foundational Chief Risk Officer, his incredibly advanced, highly sophisticated data modeling algorithms completely established Affirm's massive competitive advantage. By leveraging highly complex alternative data to massively expand credit access while ruthlessly minimizing default risk, Gettings completely architected the foundational technical infrastructure that allowed Affirm to safely finance tens of billions of dollars in consumer loans.