Jason Les, age 39, has served as Chief Executive Officer since February 8, 2021, and as a Board member since November 2017. Pursuant to an executive employment agreement entered November 20, 2024, he is engaged as CEO for an initial 36-month term with successive 12-month renewal options. His compensation includes $600,000 annual base salary in cash plus 10.0 Bitcoin, and he is eligible for annual incentive bonuses targeting 100% of base salary plus 10.0 Bitcoin.
From May 2017 through November 2020, Les served as a founding partner of Binary Digital, a software-development company, where he led the engineering team and coordinated development of AI, reverse engineering, and inter-software compatibility projects. He previously worked for over a decade as a professional heads-up poker player, competing in high-stakes games online and at major tournaments globally. In 2015 and 2017, he was selected as a human benchmark for Carnegie Mellon University's "Man vs Machine" poker artificial intelligence testing.
Les holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. He has been involved with Bitcoin since 2013, with experience in cryptocurrency mining, protocol development engineering, and open-source project contributions.
Biography extracted from Riot DEF 14A filed 2025-04-17 View cached copy (2026-08-31)Live source ↗
Roles
Contiguous filings for the same role are collapsed into a single tenure span. Click a row to see the underlying filings.
| Company | Role | Tenure | Filings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riot | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, Director | 2024-06 → present (2y 3mo) | 3 |
Show 3 underlying filings | |||
| Riot | CEO, Director | 2025-07 → present (1y 2mo) | 11 |
Show 11 underlying filings | |||
Compensation
| Year | Role as filed | Salary | Stock awards | Incentive | Other | Total | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | CEO | $1.33M | $79.26M | $2.89M | $41.1K | $83.53M | View cached copy (2026-08-31)Live source ↗ |
| 2023 | CEO | $963.8K | $10.99M | $1.50M | $39.1K | $13.49M | View cached copy (2026-08-31)Live source ↗ |
As reported in the company's DEF 14A Summary Compensation Table (SEC Reg S-K Item 402(c)). Stock and option awards are grant-date fair values — what the award was worth on the day it was granted, not cash received and not what it is worth now. Every row here reconciles: its columns add up to the total the filing printed.
Insider transactions
Totals for this person
| Bucket | Invested (shares) | Invested (USD) | Divested (shares) | Divested (USD) | Net direction | Txns | Invested @ last price | Divested @ last price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All time | 2,551,329 | $0 | 4,467,637 | $81.48M | ↓ Divested $81.48M | 16 | $53.94M | $94.45M |
| 2026 | 1,420,677 | $0 | 3,235,639 | $67.15M | ↓ Divested $67.15M | 6 | $30.03M | $68.40M |
| 2025 | - | $0 | 351,610 | $5.66M | ↓ Divested $5.66M | 5 | $0 | $7.43M |
| 2024 | 1,130,652 | $0 | 880,388 | $8.67M | ↓ Divested $8.67M | 5 | $23.90M | $18.61M |
| 2025-Q4 | - | $0 | 113,948 | $2.28M | ↓ Divested $2.28M | 1 | $0 | $2.41M |
| 2026-Q1 | 1,420,677 | $0 | - | $0 | Flat | 2 | $30.03M | $0 |
| 2026-Q2 | - | $0 | 237,703 | $6.29M | ↓ Divested $6.29M | 2 | $0 | $5.03M |
| 2026-Q3 | - | $0 | 2,997,936 | $60.85M | ↓ Divested $60.85M | 2 | $0 | $63.38M |
Invested = shares acquired (buys, grants, option exercises) — insider adding to the position. Divested = shares reduced (sells, dispositions, tax-withholding) — cash flowing TO the insider. Net direction shows which side wins on dollar terms in each bucket. % of holder's stake not yet computed (pending Form 3/4 holdings ingest). See methodology. The two @ last price columns restate the same share counts at the most recent share price we read (close of 2026-09-03); they are a valuation, not a cash flow, and they move every day the market does.
All transactions
| Date | Company | Kind | Shares | Amount (USD) | Value @ last price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | Riot | Tax withholding on vesting | 2,896,921 | $58,430,897 | $61.24M |
| 2026-07-01 | Riot | Tax withholding on vesting | 101,015 | $2,420,319 | $2.14M |
| 2026-06-22 | Riot | Open-market sale | 62,703 | $1,886,733 | $1.33M |
| 2026-05-11 | Riot | Open-market sale | 175,000 | $4,408,250 | $3.70M |
| 2026-01-01 | Riot | Grant / award / vesting | 473,559 | - | $10.01M |
| 2026-01-01 | Riot | Grant / award / vesting | 947,118 | - | $20.02M |
| 2025-10-03 | Riot | Open-market sale | 113,948 | $2,283,518 | $2.41M |
| 2025-09-29 | Riot | Open-market sale | 12,800 | $256,000 | $270.6K |
| 2025-09-24 | Riot | Open-market sale | 23,252 | $465,970 | $491.5K |
| 2025-07-21 | Riot | Open-market sale | 100,000 | $1,512,000 | $2.11M |
| 2025-07-01 | Riot | Tax withholding on vesting | 101,610 | $1,145,145 | $2.15M |
| 2024-12-10 | Riot | Open-market sale | 50,000 | $567,000 | $1.06M |
| 2024-07-01 | Riot | Tax withholding on vesting | 32,498 | $323,355 | $687.0K |
| 2024-07-01 | Riot | Grant / award / vesting | 376,884 | - | $7.97M |
| 2024-07-01 | Riot | Grant / award / vesting | 753,768 | - | $15.93M |
| 2024-06-01 | Riot | Tax withholding on vesting | 797,890 | $7,779,428 | $16.87M |