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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Max Levchin.md
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@ -31,11 +31,13 @@ relations:
start: 1998-12
fn: 1
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-10-14
---
Max R. Levchin co-founded Confinity, Inc., with [[Peter Thiel]] in December 1998 and was its chief technology officer and a director until March 2000, when Confinity merged with [[Elon Musk]]'s X.com Corporation; he was then chief technology officer and a director of the merged company, renamed [[PayPal]], Inc., in February 2001. Before Confinity he founded NetMeridian Software, a developer of security applications for handheld computers, which he ran from January 1996 to December 1998, and co-founded SponsorNet, a web advertising service. PayPal's registration statement of September 2001 named Thiel and Levchin as the two executives on whose continued work the company depended to a significant degree, and disclosed that a fraud episode between July and October 2000 had cost it 5.7 million dollars in unauthorized charge-backs and that MasterCard had fined it for excessive charge-backs.[^1] In September 2001 Levchin held 2.6 percent of the company's stock. [[eBay]] completed its acquisition of PayPal, valued at about 1.5 billion dollars, on October 3, 2002.[^1][^2]
A [[Newsweek]] article by [[Brad Stone]] published July 16, 2001 quotes Levchin, then chief technology officer: "We came to realize that we would either defeat fraud or fraud would defeat us."[^5] The article reports that PayPal reached this conclusion after its rate of rejected credit-card transactions passed one percent, and that Levchin and Thiel "reduced the maximum payment users could make from $500 to $250."[^5] The article says the company's antifraud team numbered 75 and that it had designed an internal program that "sniffs the 180,000 transactions made every day, looking for abuse."[^5] The article says the team named the software "Igor," "after a Russian mobster who plagued the system last year." The registration statement of September 2001 calls the same system "PayPal's proprietary IGOR system."[^6]
He is counted among the [[PayPal Mafia]], the network of PayPal founders and early executives whose members went on to found or lead [[LinkedIn]], [[Palantir Technologies]], [[Founders Fund]], [[Tesla]] and [[SpaceX]].[^3]
### Affirm
@ -48,3 +50,5 @@ Levchin is the founder, chairman and chief executive of [[Affirm]], a consumer l
[^2]: PayPal, Inc. Form 8-K, October 4, 2002, exhibit 99.1, "eBay Completes PayPal Acquisition." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702037693/a2090698zex-99_1.htm
[^3]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
[^4]: Affirm Holdings, Inc. Form S-1 registration statement, filed November 18, 2020. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000110465920126927/tm2026663-4_s1.htm
[^5]: Stone, Brad. "Busting the Web Bandits." *Newsweek,* July 16, 2001. https://www.newsweek.com/busting-web-bandits-154463
[^6]: PayPal, Inc. Form S-1 registration statement, filed September 28, 2001, "Business," subsection "Risk Management." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205701533855/a2059025zs-1.htm