Financial technology startup Ramp is letting some employees and early investors cash out in a new deal that values the company at $13 billion. 

The New York company announced the $150 million deal Monday. Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital and General Catalyst were among the entities that bought shares in the round. The financing marks a step up from Ramp’s peak valuation of $8.1 billion in 2022. Ramp also raised a so-called down round that pegged the company’s price closer to $5.8 billion in 2023. The rebound in value shows some renewed investor appetite for high-growth startups, even in an era of higher interest rates.

The deal is also the latest in a string of private companies letting employees cash out shares and lowering the pressure on themselves to go public. 

Stripe last week announced a tender offer that valued the company at $91.5 billion, helping its valuation rebound close to its peak of $95 billion. Co-founder and President John Collison told CNBC that Stripe has “no near-term IPO plans.” DataBricks and OpenAI have also announced major secondary rounds in the last six months.

Ramp is a financial software company that uses AI. The company issues credit cards and automates expenses and accounting. It competes with Brex, American Express and Concur in some arenas. CEO Eric Glyman said a bulk of Ramp’s customers are trying to cut overhead expenses in an era of corporate belt-tightening.

“Our core value proposition is helping businesses achieve more with less and spend less, which went from a-nice-to-have to truly the difference between whether you would exist or not in 2022 and 2023,” Glyman told CNBC.

The company serves 30,000 businesses in the U.S. including Anduril, Barry’s and Poshmark. Ramp plans to focus on enterprise expansion going forward, Glyman said. 

Ramp is using artificial intelligence to automate a lot of its technology, Glyman said. The startup now powers over $55 billion in annualized purchase volume across card transactions and bill payments, up from $10 billion in January 2023, according to Glyman. Ramp makes money off of interchange fees on credit cards plus higher-margin software subscriptions.

As for an initial public offering, Glyman said there isn’t a “timeline in place.” But it is “something we’re thinking a lot about.” He said the company was burning less than $2 million per month on average last year, reducing its need to raise new capital.

“There isn’t what you would typically see with a strong need for the capital infusion an IPO would provide,” Glyman said. “That said, companies that are seeking to stand the test of time often pursue going public.”

Patients at NYU Langone Health facilities will soon be able to check in for appointments using Amazon’s palm-scanning technology, the company announced Monday.

The contactless service, called Amazon One, can identify patients “securely and quickly,” according to a release. NYU Langone said the technology will help it speed up sign-ins, alleviate administrative strain on staff, and reduce errors and wait times.  

For a health system that handles more than 10 million patient visits each year, every minute counts. With Amazon One, NYU Langone anticipates it will be able to cut the time patients spend at their front desks from about two to three minutes to less than a minute, Andrew Rubin, NYU Langone senior vice president of clinical affairs, told CNBC. 

“That’s both a positive experience for the patient to be able to actually get in faster, and requires less work on our part having to authenticate who the patient is,” Rubin said.

Amazon will not store or access any of patients’ health data or personal information beyond their palm prints, NYU Langone said. Participation is voluntary, and patients can opt out at any time. 

NYU Langone operates six hospitals and more than 320 outpatient facilities, and it’s the first health-care organization to ever deploy Amazon One. The collaboration has been about nine months in the making, said Nader Mherabi, NYU Langone’s chief digital and information officer.

Amazon said it plans to explore additional applications for Amazon One within health care in the future, such as credentialing for access to high-security areas and shared computer systems. 

The company introduced Amazon One at its Go cashierless stores in 2020, and it rolled out to all Whole Foods Market locations in 2023. NYU Langone will be the largest third-party deployment of Amazon One to date.

The service will be available at NYU Langone sites in the New York metro area starting next week, and it will expand to other locations this year. 

Amazon and NYU Langone did not disclose terms of the deal.

– CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

Over the weekend, Trump announced the creation of a strategic crypto reserve – a pivot from the “bitcoin stockpile” he previously touted – that he said will include ether, XRP,  Solana’s SOL token and Cardano’s ADA, in addition to bitcoin.

Bitcoin rose as high as $95,000, while the smaller coins rocketed double digits.

It was welcome news to investors, who have been anxious for cryptocurrencies to come out of their consolidation. Last week, bitcoin fell under the key $90,000 level for the first time in three months to, at one point, 25% below its January all-time high. That break below support put it at risk of a bigger slide toward $70,000. Losses in smaller, riskier coins have been even steeper.

“The weekend news is exactly the type of catalyst investors have been looking for to feel reassured about follow through from the U.S. administration with respect to its crypto friendly policies,” Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, told CNBC. “Now that we’ve already seen a healthy correction in February, this sets the stage for the start to the next leg higher for crypto assets.”

Investors this week will be watching for clues about the direction of the reserve plans. White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks teased in a post on X that there would be “more to come” at the first White House Crypto Summit, scheduled to take place this Friday.

How long prices stay elevated may depend on the details disclosed at the event.