Stripe CFO Suryadevara to depart firm to handle family matters

Stripe Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara is planning to leave the firm to attend to family matters as the company continues to weigh options for raising liquidity.

Suryadevara will stay with the payments company through April to help with the transition, according to a person familiar with the matter. John Collison, Stripe's co-founder and president, will lead the firm's finance organization while a search for Suryadevara's replacement is begun, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing personnel information.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

"While Dhivya joined as a CFO, her role and impact grew quickly, and many critical parts of the company benefited from her leadership," Chief Executive Officer Patrick Collison, who co-founded the company with his brother John, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News. "We're fortunate to have worked with her over these last two and a half years, and wish her the very best for the future."

Separately, Will Gaybrick, the company's longtime chief product officer, was promoted to president of product and business. Gaybrick, who previously served as CFO, will be focused on establishing tighter connections between the firm's business, product and technology teams.

Suryadevara's departure comes after Stripe hired JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group to explore options for raising cash that the firm plans to use to cash out veteran employees' restricted stock units in the coming year. Stripe, which has dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin, has been weighing both a direct listing or a private-market capital raise as part of that work.

Read more: Stripe Hires JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs to Explore Liquidity Raise

This week, the company has been discussing a funding round led by Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner. Thrive would invest $1 billion in Stripe as part of a larger funding round valuing the startup at $55 billion to $60 billion, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News this week.

Suryadevara joined Stripe from General Motors in 2020. Since then, she's helped the Collison brothers steer Stripe through a period of explosive growth in online spending during the pandemic.

In 2021, Stripe announced it had raised $600 million, giving it a valuation of $95 billion and making it one of the world's most valuable startups. That same year, Stripe processed $640 billion in payments, a 60% increase from the year before.

But as the pandemic receded and the world opened back up, Stripe and many of its rivals faced slowing growth. The company has been forced to cut its internal valuation multiple times, and last year told staffers that it would cut more than 1,000 jobs as it sought to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn.

'Well-positioned'

"Our business is fundamentally well-positioned to weather harsh circumstances," Patrick Collison told employees at the time. "We have always taken pride in being a capital-efficient business and we think this attribute is important to preserve. To adapt ourselves appropriately for the world we're headed into, we need to reduce our costs."

Still, the firm has continued to land large partnership deals. Last month, it announced Amazon.com will "significantly expand" its use of Stripe's core payments platform, allowing the firm to begin processing "a significant portion" of the e-commerce giant's total payments volume. BMW North America also chose Stripe's technology for online purchases of the automaker's extended warranties, maintenance and digital services.