Nancy Pelosi’s Primary Challenger May Be Wealthier Than Her

Nancy Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. Her progressive primary opponent may be even richer.

Saikat Chakrabarti, an activist who’s challenging the speaker emerita in next year’s Democratic primary, is worth at least $167 million — and possibly far more than that.

If elected, he would be one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi and her husband, meanwhile, own assets worth somewhere between $100 million and $422 million.

Chakrabarti is best known in politics for serving as the campaign manager and first chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Years before that, he was a founding engineer at Stripe, which is how he became wealthy.

“After I helped build the payment processing company Stripe, I became a centimillionaire — at least on paper,” Chakrabarti told Business Insider in an email. “It was a shocking and weird experience, and of course, I feel incredibly lucky. But it’s also given me a window into how wealth inequality works in America and just how unfair it is.”

Chakrabarti launched his congressional campaign earlier this year, running on a progressive platform while arguing that Pelosi has been in office for too long and is no longer able to fight for Democrats.

Pelosi, 85, has not yet announced whether she will seek reelection in 2026. Her congressional office did not respond to a request for comment.

Chakrabarti and Pelosi both own more than $100 million worth of assets

Both Chakrabarti and Pelosi are required to file financial disclosures that include information about their assets, sources of income, and any liabilities.

As an incumbent member of Congress, Pelosi’s disclosure covers just 2024. Because he’s a candidate, Chakrabarti’s disclosure covers everything from the beginning of 2024 until July 2025.

Lawmakers and candidates are generally not required to disclose exact dollar amounts for their assets and liabilities, and only have to provide value ranges for each.

Pelosi and her husband own assets worth between $100 million and $422 million. They also have a variety of liabilities, mostly mortgages, of between $36.5 million and $106 million.

Most of the Pelosis’ wealth is bound up in real estate and stock in various tech companies. In 2024, Paul Pelosi owned between $25 million and $50 million in Apple stock, plus between $5 million and $25 million in stock each in Alphabet, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Chakrabarti’s disclosure indicates that he’s worth at least $167 million and does not have any liabilities. But unlike with the Pelosis, it’s difficult to know what the maximum value of his assets is.

That’s because the bulk of his wealth comes from equity in Stripe and a Fidelity investment fund that primarily holds US government securities. In both cases, Chakrabarti was only required to say that each asset is worth more than $50 million.

Chakrabarti did not provide a more precise amount when asked by Business Insider, and Stripe did not respond to a request for comment about the size of Chakrabarti’s stake in the company.

Aside from those two assets, much of his wealth is held across scores of other investment funds. He has earned at least $16 million in investment income since the beginning of 2024, while the Pelosis earned at least $8.9 million in 2024 from investment and rental income.

An unusual progressive candidate

Chakrabarti’s status as a centimillionaire sets him apart from other progressive politicians.

The wealthiest Democrats in Congress tend not to be members of the party’s furthest left flank, and some of the party’s most prominent progressives tend to come from more modest means.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chakrabarti’s one-time boss, recently disclosed owning somewhere between $17,000 and $81,000 in assets, along with up to $50,000 in student loan debt.

Chakrabarti’s wealth has allowed him to largely self-fund his campaign so far. The latest publicly available Federal Election Commission records show that 75% of the money in his campaign account has come from personal loans he’s made to the campaign.

He told Business Insider that while he worked “hard” at Stripe, he did not work harder than teachers or nurses, and that the American economy shouldn’t “be organized as a winner-take-all battle for survival.”

“A society that works like that, where you either hit the lottery and get rich or you’ll never be able to afford a house or a secure retirement, is crazy. And unless we change it, America is doomed to fail,” Chakrabarti said. “That’s a big reason I’m fighting for policies like Medicare-for-all, affordable housing for all, universal childcare, a Mission for America to create millions of high-wage jobs, and a wealth tax on billionaires and centimillionaires.”