U.S. financial technology firm Plaid has hired former Adyen executive Brian Dammeir as its new head of Europe, the company told CNBC exclusively.
Dammeir was previously Adyen’s global head of unified commerce, a role he led out of the Dutch payment company’s San Francisco office. Dammeir oversaw a key part of Adyen’s business — joining up different payment experiences including online, in-store, and app-based, in one single platform.
Dammeir will take over the reins from Ripsy Bandourian, who previously oversaw the company’s expansion across Europe, at a pivotal time for the company as it branches out into other areas of finance including payments and lending.
Plaid, which was last valued by investors at $13.4 billion in a funding round, offers technology that enables financial technology apps to retrieve data from people’s bank accounts and initiate payments on their behalf.
It is part of a movement in finance and technology known as “open banking,” which encourages the opening up of financial data to non-bank financial institutions to encourage competition in the sector.
Dammeir told CNBC in an exclusive interview Monday that the thing he was most excited by in joining the company was “the opportunity around open finance,” an evolution on open banking that looks to innovate in all areas of finance, including lending.
“When we think about Europe, it’s about how can we be more relevant globally … how can we find more and more use cases outside of our starting point in fintech.” Dammeir told CNBC.
“Right now, that’s really about expanding into account-to-account payments as well as into lending and traditional banking,” he added.
Bandourian, a former Booking.com executive, was appointed the company’s first head of Europe last year. She worked with Keith Grose, formerly Plaid’s head of international, who has since left the business to join business-to-business billing platform Sequence.
Bandourian left Plaid to “pursue other passions,” a company spokesperson told CNBC via email. Dammeir had interacted with executives at Plaid for “more than a decade,” the spokesperson added.
Dammeir didn’t take his decision to quit Adyen lightly. The longtime fintech executive held positions at Adyen in its North American and European offices for more than eight years, starting in product, before graduating onto general management and strategy across North America and Europe.
Dammeir said that Plaid wanted to encourage a broader movement toward so-called “open finance,” which would enable the creation of innovative new products in lending, insurance, and other parts of the finance ecosystem.
Payments has been a big focus for Plaid beyond financial data, with payment volumes on the platform having climbed more than 90% in 2023.
Now, Plaid is looking to work with partners beyond just fintechs, Dammeir indicated, without sharing names of any of its potential future partners. The company already works with the likes of Monzo, Checkout.com, Public, and Moneybox.
Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Netskope is targeting a $7.3 billion valuation in its upcoming initial public offering, after lifting its planned price range.
The cybersecurity company said it plans to sell 47.8 million shares at between $17 and $19 apiece. The deal would raise as much as $908 million at the top end.
That’s up from a previous range of $15 to $17 a share the company revealed in a filing last week, at a $6.5 billion valuation.
The cloud security company revealed plans to go public on the Nasdaq in a filing last month. Its planned debut comes amid an influx of big cybersecurity deals and during a resurgence in IPO activity after soaring inflation and interest rates squashed appetite for tech deals.
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Cybersecurity deals have topped the list of this year’s biggest tech acquisitions.
The frenzy was highlighted by Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Israeli cloud security startup Wiz in March. Palo Alto announced this summer that it’s buying identity security company CyberArk for $25 billion. Thoma Bravo-backed SailPoint went public in February.
As tariff headwinds eased, companies increasingly looked to the public markets.
Design platform Figma and Circle more than doubled in their recent market debuts. CoreWeave has more than tripled since its IPO.
After putting the brakes on IPO plans earlier this year with President Donald Trump’s tariff plans roiling global markets, Klarnajumped 15% in its NYSE debut last week. Ticket reseller StubHub is also planning a debut this month.
Netskope will debut under the ticker symbol “NTSK.” The company reported a net loss of $170 million during the first half of the year in its prospectus filing.
The California-based company, founded in 2012, operates in the cloud access security space, helping firms protect against cyber threats. Netskope named Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Broadcom among its competitors in its IPO filing.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks on the day of a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
OpenAI on Tuesday announced it will launch a dedicated ChatGPT experience with parental controls for users under 18 years old as the artificial intelligence company works to enhance safety protections for teenagers.
When OpenAI identifies that a user is a minor, they will automatically be directed to an age-appropriate ChatGPT experience that blocks graphic and sexual content and can involve law enforcement in rare cases of acute distress, the company said.
OpenAI is also developing a technology to better predict a user’s age, but ChatGPT will default to the under-18 experience if there is uncertainty or incomplete information.
The startup’s safety updates come after the Federal Trade Commission recently launched an inquiry into several tech companies, including OpenAI, over how AI chatbots like ChatGPT potentially negatively affect children and teenagers.
The agency said it wants to understand what steps these companies have taken to “evaluate the safety of these chatbots when acting as companions,” according to a release.
OpenAI also shared how ChatGPT will handle “sensitive situations” last month after a lawsuit from a family blamed the chatbot for their teenage son’s death by suicide.
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“We prioritize safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens; this is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
In August, OpenAI said it would release parental controls to help them understand and shape how their teens are using ChatGPT. OpenAI shared more details about those parental controls on Tuesday, and it said they will be available at the end of the month.
The company’s upcoming controls will allow parents to link their ChatGPT account with their teen’s via email, set blackout hours for when their teen can’t use the chatbot, manage which features to disable, guide how the chatbot responds and receive notifications if the teen is in acute distress.
ChatGPT is intended for users who are ages 13 and up, OpenAI said.
“These are difficult decisions, but after talking with experts, this is what we think is best and want to be transparent in our intentions,” Altman wrote.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor
A Youtube podcast microphone is seen at the Variety Podcasting Brunch Presented By YouTube at Austin Proper Hotel in Austin, Texas, on March 8, 2025.
Mat Hayward | Variety | Getty Images
YouTube said on Tuesday it has paid out over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies since 2021.
The surge has been fueled in part by growing viewership on connected TVs. The number of channels making more than $100,000 from TV screens jumped 45% year over year, the company said.
YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich praised the power of creators to “shape culture and entertainment in ways we never thought possible” in a release announcing the benchmark and a series of other new features.
The milestone comes as the Google-owned platform marks its 20th year and pushes to cement itself as one of the world’s most lucrative media businesses.
YouTube unveiled the updated payout figure and a slate of new creator tools at its annual Made on YouTube event in New York City.
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The company announced new artificial intelligence tools for YouTube Shorts, its short-form vertical video product. Creators will be able to turn raw footage into edited clips with AI and can add music, transitions and voiceover.
New features also include the ability to turn dialogue from eligible videos into a song to be used in the Short.
Google’s latest AI video generator, Veo 3, will also be integrated into Shorts, YouTube said.
Google uses a subset of YouTube videos to train Veo 3, to the surprise of many YouTube creators, CNBC reported in June.
YouTube turned 20 years old in April and announced it hosted over 20 billion videos on the platform, including music, Shorts, podcasts and more.
Last year, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said the company had paid $70 billion to creators between 2021 and 2024.