Netflix co-founder and executive chairman Reed Hastings will not seek re-election to the company’s board of directors once his term expires in June, the company announced on Thursday.
Hastings’ decision, announced in Netflix’s first-quarter earnings results, comes less than three years after he stepped down as co-CEO and became the board’s executive chairman. Ted Sarandos, Hastings’ co-CEO, has since split the job with Greg Peters.
Hastings called his contribution to Netflix a focus on “member joy, building a culture that others could inherit and improve, and building a company that could be both beloved by members and wildly successful for generations to come.” The co-founder will “focus on his philanthropy and other pursuits,” according to Netflix.
Sarandos and Peters both praised Hastings in statements. “Reed will always be Netflix’s founder and biggest champion—he is a part of our DNA,” Peters said.
The Netflix co-founder’s exit comes less than two months after the company’s shocking decision to exit the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, leaving Paramount to acquire the entertainment giant. (WBD is CNN’s parent company.)
During a call with investors on Thursday, Sarandos pushed back on rumors that Hastings’ departure was due to the company’s WBD bid.
“Reed was a big champion for that deal. He championed it with the board, the board unanimously supported the deal,” Sarandos said. “That absolutely had nothing to do with it.”
Sarandos said that while “it’s very unusual for a founder to step away from the board of the company after succession,” Hastings is “no ordinary founder.” He also said Netflix’s board and Nominating & Governance Committee will “take the next steps in reshaping the board in the months to come.”
Hastings founded Netflix in 1997, and the company has defined how the world consumes entertainment, first with its DVD-by-mail business model and, years later, with its streaming platform.
Under Hastings’ stewardship, Netflix took on movie-rental giants like Blockbuster and later began producing original content, challenging legacy Hollywood studios. It was also under Hastings’ leadership that Netflix first introduced its ad-supported tier, a lower-cost streaming alternative that’s now an industry standard.
By the time Hastings stepped down from the top job in 2023, the streaming giant boasted more than 230 million paying subscribers worldwide.
Sarandos and Peters have continued to grow the streamer since Hastings stepped down. In 2023, Netflix cracked down on password sharing, now an industry-wide practice among major streaming platforms, which translated into millions of new subscribers. The streamer has also taken on live sports and podcasting.
On Thursday morning, ahead of its earnings report, Netflix added more podcasts to its repertoire, including one hosted by journalist Brian Williams. As of January 2026, Netflix had 325 million paid subscribers.
Outside of Netflix, Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, founded a $100 million philanthropic fund for children’s education in 2016. Hastings and Quillin often engage in educational philanthropy, having given hundreds of millions of dollars to colleges and universities. Hastings is also one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party and owns the Utah ski resort Powder Mountain, which he picked up in 2023 shortly after stepping down as Netflix CEO.
