Chris Larsen Biography: Wife, Cars, Age, Net Worth, Children, Parents, Height, Religion, Crypto
Chris Larsen is an American tech entrepreneur, angel investor and philanthropist, best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, the blockchain payments company behind the XRP digital asset. His net worth is about $13.4 billion, mostly tied to his stake in Ripple.
Born Christian A. Larsen in San Francisco in 1960, he grew up in Cupertino, California. A first-generation college student, he earned a degree in international business and accounting from San Francisco State University in 1984, then completed an MBA at Stanford University.
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Larsen began his fintech career in 1996 as a co-founder of E-Loan, one of the first online mortgage lenders and the first company to show consumers their credit scores.
He later founded Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, and served as its CEO until 2012. Months later, he co-founded OpenCoin with Jed McCaleb, David Schwartz, and Arthur Britto, a company that became Ripple. He led it as CEO until 2016, then moved into the role of executive chairman.
In 2019, Larsen and his wife, Lyna Lam, donated $25 million in XRP to San Francisco State University, which renamed its business school the Lam Family College of Business. In January 2024, he was the victim of a theft that saw roughly $150 million in XRP taken from his personal accounts.
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| Wiki Facts & About Data | |
| Real Name: | Christian A. Larsen |
| Stage Name: | Chris Larsen |
| Born: | November 30, 1960 (age 65 years old) |
| Place of Birth: | San Francisco, California |
| Nationality: | American |
| Ethnicity: | White American |
| Education: | San Francisco State University (B.S., International Business and Accounting, 1984), Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA, 1991) |
| Height: | 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) |
| Religion: | Christianity |
| Parents: | Mr. and Mrs. Larsen |
| Spouse: | Lyna Lam |
| Children: | 2 |
| Occupation: | Business Executive, Angel Investor, Philanthropist |
| Net Worth: | $13.4 billion |
Early Life & Education
Chris Larsen, whose full name is Christian A. Larsen, was born on November 30, 1960, in San Francisco, California. His zodiac sign is Sagittarius. He is American, White, and a Christian.
Mr. and Mrs. Larsen raised him in the Bay Area. His father worked as an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines at San Francisco International Airport, and his mother was a freelance illustrator. Information about his siblings is not publicly confirmed.
He spent most of his childhood in Cupertino, and he has recalled his father’s frustration with taking out loans and financing purchases. This experience later shaped his consumer-finance ventures.
Larsen moved back to San Francisco for college and, as a first-generation college student, graduated from San Francisco State University in 1984 with a B.S. in international business and accounting.
He then worked for Chevron, performing financial audits in Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia, before earning an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991.
Career
Chris Larsen began his career at Chevron, where he performed financial audits in Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia before returning to school for his MBA.
In 1996, he co-founded E-Loan, one of the first online mortgage lenders in the United States, with Janina Pawlowski. As chairman and CEO, he made E-Loan the first company to show consumers their credit scores and played a key role in passing a strong consumer financial privacy law. The company went public in 1999, closed more than $27 billion in consumer loans, and was sold to Popular, Inc. in 2005 for about $300 million.
Soon after the sale, Larsen started Prosper Marketplace, the first peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the United States, inspired by the group-lending traditions of his wife, Lyna Lam’s, Cambodian family background.
He served as its CEO until 2012, guiding the company through regulatory scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission over whether its loans counted as securities. Alongside his own ventures, he has served on the boards or advisory boards of Credit Karma, Betable and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
A few months after leaving Prosper, Larsen co-founded OpenCoin in 2012 with Jed McCaleb, David Schwartz and Arthur Britto. The company built a payment protocol based on an earlier concept by Ryan Fugger and later renamed Ripple. As CEO, he steered the company toward cross-border payments for banks and financial institutions, using the XRP digital asset as a bridge currency for real-time settlement. In 2016, he stepped down from day-to-day operations to become executive chairman, and Brad Garlinghouse took over as CEO effective January 1, 2017.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple, Larsen and Garlinghouse in December 2020, alleging that XRP sales amounted to unregistered securities offerings. The case against Larsen and Garlinghouse personally was dropped in October 2023, and the wider dispute with Ripple ended in 2025 with a $50 million settlement payment. Larsen publicly criticized the lawsuit as a politically motivated attempt to suffocate crypto in the United States.
He holds roughly an 18% stake in Ripple, which raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation in November 2025, along with a large personal XRP holding and about $2.1 billion in outside investments. In January 2024, he was the victim of a theft in which roughly $150 million in XRP was taken from his personal accounts.
Beyond business, Larsen and Lam fund causes including public safety, criminal justice reform, climate change mitigation and psychedelic science, and in 2019 they donated $25 million in XRP to San Francisco State University.
Social Media
- Wikipedia: Chris Larsen
- X: Chris Larsen (@chrislarsensf) / X
- Forbes: Chris Larsen
Personal Life
Chris Larsen is 65 years old, and he stands 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) tall.
He is married to Lyna Lam, a San Francisco philanthropist of Cambodian heritage. Her father, Quang Lam, led his family out of Cambodia during the war and genocide there, an experience that has shaped the couple’s giving.
The wedding date and year are not publicly confirmed. Their marriage is the only one on record for Larsen, and he has no publicly documented previous marriages.
Larsen and Lam have two sons, whose names and birth years are not publicly confirmed. The family has a home in Russian Hill, San Francisco, and a wine-country property in Calistoga, California.
The couple shares a philanthropic project. In 2019, they donated $25 million in XRP to San Francisco State University through Rippleworks, and the university renamed its business school the Lam Family College of Business in honour of Lam’s family. They also sponsor the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Awards, which support refugee aid groups.
Net Worth
Chris Larsen has a net worth of $13.4 billion, placing him among the world’s richest people and the wealthiest figures in cryptocurrency.
Most of his fortune comes from Ripple, where he holds roughly an 18% stake in a company valued at $40 billion in its latest funding round, along with a large personal holding of the XRP digital asset.
His wealth also includes about $2.1 billion in investments outside Ripple. His earlier ventures laid the foundation: he sold E-Loan to Popular, Inc. in 2005 for about $300 million, then built Prosper Marketplace before co-founding Ripple.
Much of his wealth is tied to XRP’s price, so his net worth moves with the crypto market. His fortune peaked at over $50 billion during the January 2018 XRP surge, then fell sharply as the token lost most of its value in the months that followed.
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