Good morning!
Try something new today… Here are the stories you might have missed this week but shouldn’t have. Welcome to our new Saturday CEO Recap.
What You Missed This Week:
1. 🤑 OpenAI hits $500B after $6.6B employee tender
Sam Altman had a big week: OpenAI launched Sora, introduced Instant Checkout for Etsy, and hit the top valuation slot. A $6.6B secondary sale of employee-held shares pegged its worth at $500B, the highest ever for a private company. Buyers included SoftBank, Dragoneer, Thrive Capital, MGX, and T. Rowe Price. Proceeds went to employees—not OpenAI itself—and the prior primary round was in August at $300B, alongside a $300B Oracle Cloud commitment. (Yahoo Finance)
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3. 🛍️ ChatGPT adds ‘Instant Checkout’ with Etsy; Shopify next
U.S. ChatGPT users can now buy single items from Etsy sellers directly in chat through the new Instant Checkout feature, with Shopify’s 1M+ merchants to follow. After launch, Etsy sales through ChatGPT rose 80% overnight, marking a sharp usage spike. Market reaction was swift: Etsy stock jumped up to 16%, while Shopify gained about 6%. Merchants pay a commission on sales, but shoppers face no added fees. The move highlights OpenAI’s push to embed commerce directly into conversational AI. (CNBC)
4. 💰 AI chip startup Unconventional raises toward $5B valuation
Former Databricks AI chief Naveen Rao is raising $1B for Unconventional, Inc., targeting a $5B valuation. The round is led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Lightspeed, Lux Capital, and Databricks also investing. Rao has already secured “hundreds of millions” and plans to close the rest in tranches. According to TechCrunch, Bloomberg first reported Databricks’ participation earlier this year. The company’s goal is to design a novel AI machine built with custom silicon chips and servers, aiming to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in training and inference hardware. (TechCrunch)
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6. 💸 Venmo and PayPal to enable cross-app payments starting November
Life is about to get a lot easier because beginning in November, users will be able to send money directly between Venmo and PayPal globally. So if you have friends outside USA that owe you, they can now PayPal to your Venmo. Initially, PayPal users can find Venmo contacts via phone number; email lookup will follow. The move is part of PayPal’s “PayPal World” expansion, aimed at creating more seamless cross-platform payments. Together, Venmo and PayPal reach a user base of about 2 billion. (TechCrunch)
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