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Skechers soars after the sneaker giant inks a $9.4 billion deal to go private

The chunky shoe icon is leaving Wall Street after 26 years on the market.

5/5/25 11:47AM

Skechers stock jumped as much as 25% on Monday after the ’90s sneaker staple announced a $9.4 billion go-private deal with private equity firm 3G Capital.

The brand has seen a revival in recent years, boosted by the chunky sneaker trend and a streak of strong sales, including a record $2.41 billion in Q1 of this year. But Skechers also slashed its full-year forecast, citing “macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies.” Skechers is particularly vulnerable to recent tariff hikes, with 40% to 45% of its footwear made in China.

Before the deal, Skechers had a market cap of $7.4 billion. The buyout values the company at $9.4 billion, or $63 per share — still about $2 below its current trading price, even after the post-deal pop. The deal is expected to close by Q3 and will be financed through a mix of cash from 3G and debt financing by JPMorgan Chase.

Even with today’s rally, Skechers shares are still down roughly 8% this year.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”