Reed Hastings Gives Netflix Shares Worth $500 Million as a Gift to Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Reed Hastings has given away 790,000 shares of Netflix — worth nearly $500 million — as a gift, according to a regulatory filing.

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According to a source familiar with the stock transaction, the streaming mogul gifted the shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the organization to which he had given 2 million Netflix shares in January . All told, the stock he’s granted to the charity is worth about $1.76 billion today. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation says it works to “bridge critical gaps and divisions to deliver strategies that reduce systemic inequities” in the Bay Area.

Hastings, the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO of Netflix, disposed of 790,000 shares on July 24, according to an SEC ownership disclosure Friday. The shares were given as a gift but the beneficiary was not disclosed. Following the transaction, Hastings — through the Hastings-Quillin Family Trust, established with his wife, Patty Quillin — owns 2,201,541 shares in the streaming giant.

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation said that in 2023 it distributed $3.1 billion in grants directly to nonprofits in the Bay Area in 2023, more than any other entity in the state of California, and overall granted $4.58 billion to more than 5,500 nonprofits and community organizations worldwide. Previous donors include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who have donated about $1.5 billion to the SVCF. The organization says it ranks just behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “as one of the largest grantmaking foundations in the country” but that unlike other charitable entities it focuses on supporting a specific geographic area. The top issue areas funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and its donors are: health, sciences, education, public safety, environment, community development, civic participation, arts and culture, and human services.

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Separately, Hastings this week revealed a $7 million donation to a super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of VP Kamala Harris .

Hastings, who co-founded Netflix in 1997, stepped down as CEO after serving in the role for 25 years. Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters serve as the company’s co-CEOs.

Hastings has a long track record as an educational philanthropist. In 2020, Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, gave $120 million to Spelman College, Morehouse College and the United Negro College Fund for scholarships to historically Black colleges and universities. Last year, Hastings donated $20 million to Minerva University, styled as a next-generation institution of higher education. Hastings and Quillin also donated $10 million to Tougaloo College, an HBCU in Mississippi, and the couple have supported the KIPP Foundation, which runs a national network of tuition-free charter schools serving low-income communities of color.

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