Michael Arrington

Arrington grew up in Orange County, California, and Surrey, England; he began at UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, transferred to Claremont McKenna College and earned an economics degree in 1992, then a law degree from Stanford in 1995.⁠[1]

After graduating he practiced securities law at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson SonsiniWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (known as Wilson Sonsini) is a law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, founded in 1961 and known for serving technology, life sciences, and other growth companies and their investors; it served as counsel on the initial public offerings of companies including Apple, Netscape, Google, and Tesla. As of December 2025 the firm had more than 1,000 lawyers, and its 2025 revenue was $1.4 billion.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

From 1999 to 2001 he co-founded the internet payments company Achex.⁠[3]

He was also involved with RealNames, ran Pool.com and Zip.ca in Canada, and was chief operating officer of the ticketing company Razorgator.⁠[1]

TechCrunch published its first post on June 11, 2005; early reader meetups at the house he rented in Atherton, in Silicon Valley, grew from a dozen people to about four hundred.⁠[4]

He was then working with Keith Teare on Edgeio. Arrington later wrote that Teare had claimed 75% of TechCrunch under the equity split of their holding company Archimedes Ventures and that he eventually agreed to give Teare 10% of the value he received; Teare responded by proposing the title “founding shareholder,” which Arrington accepted.⁠[5]

In 2007 Arrington created the startup database CrunchBase under TechCrunch.⁠[6]

In 2008 TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.⁠[7]

In August 2008 he unveiled the first prototype of the TechCrunch tablet, which connected to Wi-Fi and browsed the web by touch screen.⁠[8]

On November 30, 2009, he announced the project’s end, saying it collapsed over “greed, jealousy and miscommunication.”⁠[9]

He said the partner Fusion Garage ended the partnership and launched the device under a new name; his lawsuit’s claims included fraud, misappropriation of business ideas, breach of fiduciary duty and Lanham Act violations.⁠[10]

He has written that from 2010 he had vertigo attacks of up to 48 hours, which stopped by mid-2012 after treatment.⁠[5]

On September 28, 2010, he signed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to sell TechCrunch to AOL; TechCrunch then had about 40 staff and more than $10 million in turnover.⁠[11]

He wrote that he was exhausted after five years and said, “I fully intend to stay with AOL for a very, very long time.”⁠[2]

On September 1, 2011, it became public that he was raising an early-stage venture fund of about $20 million with AOL as cornerstone limited partner and Patrick Gallagher as his partner.⁠[12]

AOL’s statements on his TechCrunch role changed several times, and it said he could not use TechCrunch as a source of deal flow.⁠[13]

Arianna Huffington said he was off the editorial payroll; Arrington wrote that TechCrunch had lost editorial independence and asked AOL to reaffirm it or sell TechCrunch back to its original shareholders.⁠[14]

On September 12 AOL announced he had decided to leave TechCrunch and AOL, named Erick Schonfeld editor and said it would back his new fund through its investment.⁠[15]

He announced his exit at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 wearing a shirt reading “Unpaid Blogger.”⁠[16]

In April 2012 he was invited to conduct on-stage interviews at TechCrunch Disrupt New York.⁠[17]

On October 23, 2012, he wrote that AOL had “unfired” him, that he would add conflict disclosures, and that he would write about CrunchFund portfolio companies on Uncrunched rather than TechCrunch.⁠[18]

In 2016 he stepped back from leading CrunchFund to focus on his health.⁠[19]

The fund was later renamed Tuesday Capital, with Patrick Gallagher as managing partner.⁠[20]

On November 28, 2017, he announced Arrington XRP Capital, a $100 million fund denominated in XRP that would invest mainly in digital assets and token sales, with partners including former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde.⁠[21]

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said RippleRippleRipple is an American fintech company, legally named Ripple Labs Inc., that provides banks, payment providers, funds, and businesses with blockchain- and digital asset-based cross-border payments, digital asset custody, a U.S. dollar stablecoin, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury management services. Its business makes extensive use of the public XRP Ledger blockchain and its native token XRP, but neither is the same as the company itself; from 2020 to 2025, the company fought a nearly five-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over whether its XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings.Open the full entry played no official role in the fund.⁠[22]

In 2017 he founded Arrington Capital, serving as founder and managing member.⁠[3]

Its portfolio includes Aptos, Moonbeam, ImmutableX, Polkadot and Perplexity AIPerplexityPerplexity is a San Francisco–based artificial intelligence company founded in 2022, known for its “answer engine” that gives answers with cited sources, and it has also launched products such as the Comet browser.Open the full entry.⁠[23]

On August 28, 2025, Arrington XRP Capital Fund bought the sponsor securities of the special purpose acquisition company Armada Acquisition Corp. II for $6.6 million, becoming its new sponsor, with Taryn Naidu as incoming CEO.⁠[24]

In October 2025 Armada II, chaired by Arrington, signed a business combination agreement with Evernorth HoldingsEvernorthEvernorth (Evernorth Holdings Inc.) is a San Francisco-based digital asset treasury company holding XRP, led by former Ripple executive Asheesh Birla, which listed on Nasdaq under the ticker “XRPN” in October 2026 through a merger with the special purpose acquisition company Armada Acquisition Corp. II.Open the full entry to create a company buying XRP on the open market, and the ticker changed to XRPN; Arrington expressed conviction in “Evernorth's ability to drive meaningful impact and add shareholder value.”⁠[25]

On October 9, 2026, Evernorth completed the combination, holding about 473 million XRP, with Arrington Capital among its investors.⁠[26]

Personal website: Public link: https://uncrunched.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

X: Public account: https://x.com/arrington (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

TechCrunch: Official website: https://techcrunch.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

Crunchbase: Official website: https://www.crunchbase.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[27]

Arrington Capital: Official website: https://www.arringtoncapital.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[28]