Payment processed: The rise of Stripe

2/29/24 7:00PM

Chips off the table

‍Fintech darling Stripe has struck a deal for current and former employees to sell ~$1 billion in Stripe shares, possibly delaying the company’s long-awaited IPO.

The good news for those cashing out some of their hard-earned shares is that the deal was done at a reported $65 billion valuation, a 30% increase on its last fund raise, when the company raised over $6.5bn in one of the largest private stock sales in history. Despite this uptick, the valuation falls below its 2021 peak of $95bn and well below smaller private sales of Stripe stock that were done at prices that implied a valuation north of $100bn.

Founded by the Irish Collison brothers, Stripe has become an indispensable player in the “buying stuff on the internet” ecosystem, with the company reportedly processing a mind-boggling $1 trillion in payments last year, according to a recent interview given by CEO PatrickCollison. That means Stripe processed more than the GDP of the vast majority (175+) of countries on Earth.

‍Go faster Stripes

‍Stripe supercharged its growth by striking early partnerships with other tech startups, including Shopify and Instacart. In recent years, however, the company has also cracked a number of household brands, with Stripe now processing payments for companies such as Ford, Amazon, and IBM.

When e-commerce went hyperbolic in the pandemic, Stripe was catapulted into the limelight as one of the most valuable startups in the world, becoming something of a bellwether for the broader IPO pipeline ever since. Last year's tally of 171public listings marked the global market's lowest point since 2012. Now it looks like Stripe may wait until 2025 to go public... if it does at all.

Jon Keegan

10h

OpenAI and Microsoft reach agreement that moves OpenAI closer to for-profit status

In a joint statement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” for their renegotiated $13 billion partnership, which was a source of recent tension between the two companies.

Settling the agreement is a requirement to clear the way for OpenAI to convert to a for-profit public benefit corporation, which it must do before a year-end deadline to secure a $20 billion investment from SoftBank.

OpenAI also announced that the controlling non-profit arm would hold an equity stake in the PBC valued at $100 billion, which would “making it one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world.”

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission—and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

A joint statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission—and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Rani Molla

14h

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

Large companies have started to drop AI from their businesses

Census data shows drop in large companies using AI

AI appears to be everywhere, but that doesn’t mean big companies have fully embraced the use of the technology in their day-to-day business.

Claire Yubin Oh, Jon Keegan9/10/25