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The 50 Most Interesting Companies In Bitcoin's History: 25/50

Ledger

Founded by Nicolas Bacca, Eric Larcheveque, Joel Pobeda, Vanessa Fara Rabesandratana 2014 · Hardware Wallets · Active
The Idea: A hardware wallet for securing cryptocurrency private keys. This is the mass-market counterpart to Trezor's open-source approach. Based in Paris, France.
Early Traction: Ledger's Nano S became the best-selling hardware wallet in the world, outselling Trezor by a wide margin through retail distribution and aggressive marketing.
Peak Stats: $1.5B valuation. Over 6 million devices sold. 1.5M active customers. $70.9M revenue in 2024.
Status Today: Active. Suffered a major customer data breach in 2020 that leaked names and addresses of customers, a deeply ironic security failure for a security company. Controversial 'Ledger Recover' feature in 2023 drew backlash from the Bitcoin community, implying Ledger could access user private keys. Still the market leader by unit sales. Rumored to be planning an IPO.
Why It Matters:

Its success (and controversies) illustrate the tension between mass-market adoption and optimal products. The customer data leaks remain highly controversial.