Who Owns Silicon Valley Bank?

Bill Biggerstaff and Robert Medearis founded Silicon Valley Bank in 1983 in Santa Clara, California, to serve the technology startups that conventional banks ignored. Its insight was that venture-backed companies, unprofitable and risky by traditional metrics, could be banked profitably if the bank understood the venture ecosystem. It became the financial backbone of Silicon Valley: at its peak roughly half of all US venture-backed startups banked with it, and its client list included generations of technology companies from seed stage through IPO.

The bank built specialized practices over four decades. It lent to startups against venture backing, provided treasury and foreign exchange to global tech companies, ran a wine division serving California wineries, and developed deep relationships with venture capital firms whose portfolio companies it banked. Parent SVB Financial Group expanded into private banking, securities underwriting, and fund banking for PE and VC.

The collapse in March 2023 was the second-largest US bank failure at that point and the defining regional bank crisis. SVB had invested heavily in long-dated Treasuries and mortgage securities during the near-zero-rate era, accumulating roughly $15 billion in unrealized losses as rates rose. When it announced a capital raise on March 8, 2023, to cover losses on securities sales, the disclosure triggered a digital bank run. Venture firms told portfolio companies to flee, and $42 billion in withdrawal requests hit on March 9 alone. Regulators seized the bank on March 10.

The FDIC ran it as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank for seventeen days before selling to First Citizens on March 27. The SVB brand survived under First Citizens for three and a half years, longer than many predicted, because its name still carried weight in the innovation economy. First Citizens ultimately decided the parent brand was stronger, rebranding it October 6, 2026 with a campaign titled "Where Silicon Valley Banks."