Pascal Gauthier

Gauthier began his career at Kelkoo, a price comparison service. In 2004 Yahoo!YahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry acquired Kelkoo for €475 million.⁠[1][2]

In 2008 he joined the advertising company Criteo, where he served as chief operating officer for five years and was involved in its pivot to advertising, which led to the company’s global expansion to a market capitalisation of €2.17 billion.⁠[1]

A Mosaic Ventures partner recalled in a 2017 farewell post that he had worked closely with Gauthier when Gauthier was Criteo’s COO and the partner was a board member and early investor.⁠[2]

His first investment after Criteo was Teads.tv, a premium viewable advertising marketplace, which Altice acquired in 2017 for €256 million.⁠[1]

He then worked as a venture partner at Mosaic Ventures, a London venture capital firm focused on Series A companies. Mosaic Ventures described him as its first venture partner, who helped identify entrepreneurs in Paris, advised its founders on strategy and operations, and developed the firm’s relationships in the French startup ecosystem.⁠[1][2]

As of 2017 he was also non-executive chairman of Kaiko, a financial data website on BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

By his own account, he started working with Ledger (Hardware Wallet Company)Ledger (Hardware Wallet Company)Ledger is a crypto-asset hardware wallet company headquartered in Paris, France, founded in 2014 by eight people including Eric Larchevêque. It is known for its secure-chip-based Ledger Nano hardware wallets and also offers the Ledger Wallet app (formerly Ledger Live) and Ledger Enterprise services for institutions. It is one of the largest hardware wallet makers and has been through security incidents including a 2020 customer data breach, the 2023 Connect Kit supply-chain attack, and the 2026 discovery of spying hardware implanted in devices sold through resellers.Open the full entry in early 2015 as a seed investor and non-executive board member.⁠[1]

On September 21, 2017, Ledger announced Gauthier’s appointment as president, with Eric Larchevêque remaining CEO. At the time Ledger had sold more than 300,000 hardware wallets in 165 countries and had 62 employees in Paris, Vierzon and San Francisco.⁠[1]

Mosaic Ventures published a farewell post noting that he had started the next chapter of his career as president of Ledger.⁠[2]

On January 18, 2018, Ledger announced a $75 million funding round. Gauthier, then president, said the size of the opportunity and the team “persuaded me to leave life as an investor and to re-join the corporate world.” After the round, Ledger’s board consisted of Simon Cook of Draper Esprit, Fleur Pellerin of Korelya Capital, Cyril Bertrand of Xange, and Nicolas Bacca, Gauthier and Larchevêque.⁠[3]

On April 24, 2019, Ledger announced that President Gauthier would become CEO and that Larchevêque would become executive chairman of the board. In an open letter, Larchevêque described Gauthier as a seed investor and board member who had joined as president and who would be responsible for executing on the company’s strategy and the delivery of its products.⁠[4]

In the same open letter Gauthier wrote: “I’m truly honored to become the CEO of Ledger.”⁠[4]

On December 21, 2020, Gauthier wrote to customers as CEO about the data breach that followed a July 2020 cyberattack on Ledger: the contents of a customer database had been dumped on a hacker forum, exposing the postal addresses, names and phone numbers of about 272,000 customers. He wrote that the company would not refund customers as some had suggested, but would strengthen its security efforts, and that it had recruited a new chief information security officer.⁠[5]

On March 30, 2023, Ledger announced an additional €100 million in its Series C round at a €1.3 billion valuation. Gauthier, by then chairman and CEO, said the company was “doubling down on our mission to bring self-custody to everyone.”⁠[6]

After Ledger announced its key recovery service Ledger Recover, it faced backlash from some members of the crypto community. In a Twitter Spaces session on May 23, 2023, joined by more than 13,000 users, Gauthier called the past week a “humbling experience,” apologized for the firm’s “miscommunication,” and announced that Ledger Recover would be postponed while the company accelerated its open-source plans, starting with core components of its operating system and Ledger Recover, which “won’t be released until this work is complete.”⁠[7]

Gauthier has expressed a preference for the United States when discussing a potential Ledger listing. In an interview with the Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry in November 2025, he said: “Today, the money for cryptocurrencies is in New York. It’s nowhere else in the world, and certainly not in Europe.”⁠[8]

In 2024 Gauthier was listed as a Paris Blockchain Week Summit speaker as chairman and CEO of Ledger; he was also non-executive chairman of Kaiko, a digital data analytics provider.⁠[9]

Ledger: Official website: https://www.ledger.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

X: Public account: https://x.com/_pgauthier (opens in a new window).⁠[7]