Who Actually Owns Home Depot?

For many, The Home Depot is synonymous with its famous founders: Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. As it turns out, the reality is more complicated than that, not to mention more corporate. While Marcus and Blank created the home improvement giant after being fired from a rival retailer in the late 1970s, they no longer hold controlling stakes in the company they launched. Today, Home Depot is a publicly traded corporation primarily owned by large institutional investors, not its founders.

Home Depot was founded in 1978 after Marcus and Blank were dismissed from Handy Dan Home Improvement, a regional chain in the southwest United States. While there, the two had begun toying with the idea of massive warehouse-style stores with low prices, lots of inventory, and knowledgeable employees who could guide customers through their projects. This was years before you could get deals on tools at Costco.

After being fired, they teamed with co-founders and investors Ken Langone and Pat Farrah to open the first two Home Depot stores in Atlanta. The early days were rocky, as is often the case, but the concept obviously went on to blow up in a major way. By 1981, Home Depot went public. This was the first step toward a gradual shift away from founder ownership.

As Home Depot expanded into thousands of stores across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, true ownership spread to its millions of shareholders. Marcus and Blank eventually stepped away from day-to-day operations and, by 2002, retired from the company entirely. Both men remain closely linked with the brand in the public imagination, but they are no longer owners in any meaningful controlling sense.

Today, Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement retailer with more than 2,300 stores and approximately 475,000 associates across North America. It is headquartered in Atlanta and led by Chair, President, and CEO Ted Decker. He's been with the company since 2000 and also serves on its board of directors. Still, not even he "owns" the company in any traditional sense. Like most modern corporations, Home Depot is owned by its shareholders.

The biggest stakes belong to money management firms that work on behalf of millions of individual investors. Vanguard Group Inc. is Home Depot's largest institutional holder, owning roughly 9.88% of outstanding shares as of September 2025. BlackRock Inc. follows with about 7.57%, and State Street Corp. holds approximately 4.63%. Similar to who owns Lowe's, the other major holders include Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab, many also being large shareholders in the world's biggest tech companies. Though no single entity holds a majority stake, collectively these institutions wield enormous influence over Home Depot through voting power and board oversight.