Technology

More startups are being spun out of Klarna than any other European fintech unicorn

Published

1 month ago

October 22, 2024

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Buy now, pay later firms like Klarna and Block’s Afterpay could be about to face tougher rules in the U.K.

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LONDON — More startups are being spun out of Swedish digital payments firm Klarna than any other financial technology unicorn in Europe, according to a new report from venture capital firm Accel.

Accel’s “Fintech Founder Factory” report shows that alumni from Klarna have gone on to create a total of 62 new startups, including the likes of Swedish lending technology firm Anyfin, regulatory compliance platform Bits Technology and AI-powered coding platform Pretzel AI.

That is more than any other venture-backed fintech startup worth $1 billion or more in the region.

This includes the digital banking app Revolut, whose former employees have founded 49 startups. It also includes money transfer app Wise and online-only bank N26, where ex-staff at both firms have started 33 companies each, according to Accel’s data.

‘Founder factories’

Accel labels these companies “founder factories,” on the basis that they have become breeding grounds for talent that often go on to establish their own firms.

The world's top 250 fintech companies of 2024

“We now have a very long list of large, durable, successful companies in Europe across the different ecosystems — including London, Berlin and Stockholm — that have been generating interesting outcomes,” Luca Bocchio, partner at Accel, told CNBC.

Out of 98 venture-backed fintech unicorns in Europe and Israel, 82 have produced 635 new tech-enabled startups, according to Accel’s report, which was published Tuesday ahead of a fintech event the firm is hosting in London Wednesday.

The data also factors in fintech unicorns based in Israel. However, most of the biggest fintech founder factories come from Europe.

Klarna’s workforce reduction

Klarna has attracted headlines in recent months due to commentary from the buy now, pay later giant’s founder and CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, about using artificial intelligence to help reduce headcount.

Klarna, which currently has a company-wide hiring freeze in place, cut its overall employee headcount by roughly 24% to 3,800 in August this year. Siemiatkowski has said that Klarna was able to reduce the number of people it hires thanks to its implementation of generative AI.

He is looking to further reduce Klarna’s headcount to 2,000 employees — but has yet to specify a time for this target.

Klarna’s ability to produce so many new startups had little to do with cutbacks at the company or its focus on using AI to boost worker productivity and hiring less people overall, according to Accel’s Bocchio.

Asked about why Klarna topped the ranking of fintech founder factories in Europe, Bocchio said: “Klarna is an organization that is coming of age now.”

That means it is currently “well positioned to produce interesting founders,” Bocchio added — both because it’s large and has been around for a long time, and because of the “interesting” ways its staff work internally.

Staying close to home

Another notable finding from Accel’s report is that most companies founded by former fintech unicorn employees tend to do so in the same cities and hubs their employer was founded in.

Nearly two-thirds (61%) of companies founded by former employees of fintech unicorns were founded in the same city as the unicorn, according to Accel.

More broadly, the numbers show that Europe is seeing a “flywheel effect,” according to Bocchio, as tech firms are scaling to such a large size that staff can take learnings from them and leave to set up their own ventures.

“I think the flywheel is spinning because that talent is remaining inside the flywheel. That talent is not going anywhere.” This, he said, “speaks to the maturity and appetite” of individuals within Europe’s fintech founder factories. “We expect this trend to continue. I don’t see any reason why it should stop.”

Technology

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

Published

3 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

Technology

Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.

The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”

This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

Technology

Nvidia shares slump 3% in premarket as quarterly revenue growth slows

Published

11 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Nvidia shares slump 3% in premarket as quarterly revenue growth slows

POLAND – 2024/11/13: In this photo illustration, the NVIDIA company logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Nvidia shares dropped in U.S. premarket trading Thursday after the tech giant’s third-quarter earnings failed to impress investors.

Shares of the chipmaker slumped 3.21% at around 5:03 a.m. ET, following the Wednesday release of Nvidia’s quarterly results, which beat on both the top and bottom lines.

Revenue came in at $35.08 billion, up 94% year-on-year and exceeding the $33.16 billion forecast by LSEG analysts. Earnings per share was 81 cents adjusted, also above analyst expectations.

Other chipmakers fell on the back of the market reaction to Nvidia’s third-quarter results. Shares of Intel, Qualcomm and Micron Technology all lost 1% or more in value, while AMD declined 0.6%.

The slump in Nvidia also had a knock-on effect on European semiconductor firms. ASML, a key chip equipment supplier, dropped 0.9%, while compatriot Dutch chip firm ASMI fell 0.5%. Chipmakers BE Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Infineon slipped 0.8%, 0.7 and 0.6%, respectively.

Several notable chip names were also in negative territory in Asia. TSMC, which makes Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units, eased as much as 1.5%. Contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn dropped 1.9%.

Why are Nvidia shares falling?

Nvidia has largely cornered the market for the high-powered chips powering the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Despite nearly doubling sales year-on-year, Nvidia’s third-quarter results showed a slowdown from previous quarters. Nvidia previously reported growth of 122% in the second quarter, 262% in the first quarter, and 265% in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Derren Nathan, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said in emailed comments Wednesday that the dip in Nvidia’s share price “suggests even outstanding isn’t enough for some investors,” adding that he expects the stock to bounce back once markets open.

“NVIDIA’s generated stellar gains for shareholders over many years now, and right now it’s pretty hard to see any major holes in the investment case,” Nathan added.