Dhivya Suryadevara, former Chief Financial Officer of GM, named new Stripe CFO.
Source: GM
Stripe has snagged General Motors‘ chief financial officer Dhivya Suryadevara as the payment start-up beefs up its C-suite amid an e-commerce boom brought on by the pandemic.
Suryadevara was named the automaker’s first female finance chief in 2018, leading it through a pandemic that pressured GM’s finances this year as global factories were closed. At Stripe, she will have to balance “aggressive growth while maintaining the highest standards in discipline and fiscal responsibility,” Stripe said.
“Stripe’s mission to increase the GDP of the internet is more important now than ever,” Suryadevara said in a press release Tuesday. “I really enjoy leading complex, large-scale businesses and I hope to use my skills to help accelerate Stripe’s already steep growth trajectory.”
Tuesday’s announcement follows a flurry of recent high-profile Stripe hires. The company has poached Mike Clayville, from Amazon Web Services, to become Stripe’s Chief Revenue Officer, and Trish Walsh, previously at Voya Financial, as General Counsel.
GM named John Stapleton, currently North America CFO, as acting global finance chief, effective Aug.15. Stapleton has been in his current role since 2014 and he joined the company in 1990.
The automaker said it will conduct an internal and external search for a successor for Suryadevara.
“Dhivya has been a transformational leader in her tenure as CFO,” Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, said in a statement. “She has helped the company strengthen our balance sheet, improve our cost structure, focus on cash generation and drive the right investments for our future. We wish her every success.”
Stripe’s eye-popping growth
San Francisco-based Stripe makes software that lets businesses accept payments online. Thousands of companies, including Amazon, Slack, Glossier, Shopify and Under Armour, use Stripe’s software tools. It’s one of the most valuable private Silicon Valley companies after a recent funding round that boosted its valuation to $36 billion. The start-up has attracted investments from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Google’s venture arm Capital G, among others.
Stripe has seen eye-popping growth during the pandemic as its revenue is largely tied to growth in online shopping. In its latest Series G funding round, Stripe highlighted Covid-19 outbreak “pushing the economy online” and said “several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks.”
The CFO role would be a crucial spot to fill ahead of a public offering. Despite its ballooning growth and valuation, Stripe co-founder and president, John Collison, has said the company has “no plans” to go public right away.
“We’re very happy as a private company,” Collison told CNBC in a phone interview last year. “We’re quite early in this opportunity.”
Stripe is a six-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company and landed at the top spot on the list in 2020.
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