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Fabien Pinckaers, CEO of Belgian-based enterprise software startup Odoo.

Odoo

Odoo, a startup taking on SAP in the realm of enterprise software, boosted its valuation to 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in a secondary share round led by Alphabet‘s venture fund and Sequoia Capital.

The Belgium-based company develops open-source enterprise resource planning software, with over 80 applications available on its platform offering businesses tools for accounting, customer relationship management, human resources and e-commerce and website building.

Fabien Pinckaers, CEO and co-founder of Odoo, told CNBC in an interview this week that his company didn’t have a need to raise any primary capital as it is “cash profitable” and growing revenue at a rate of 50% year-over-year. Enterprise resource planning, he said, is “still a very fragmented market.”

“The reason everybody [has] failed [in this market] is that it’s quite complex,” Pinckaers told CNBC. “Small companies have complex needs from accounting to inventory, to website, e-commerce, point-of-sale. It’s a lot and they don’t have budget, and they need something that is simple and affordable.”

“Nobody succeeded to get both,” he added. “You have complex products like SAP that run well for large companies. But it’s complex and expensive.”

Andrew Reed, partner at Sequoia Capital, added that the market Odoo is addressing “just requires more gestation time than most startups both because the core system is very complex, and making it simple to use for small businesses and various countries is no small feat.”

Humble beginnings

Odoo “is not your traditional Silicon Valley tech story,” according to Reed.

Pinckaers opened the company’s first-ever office 22 years ago on a farm in Belgium. That was all he could afford at the time. Later, as the company started bringing in revenue, Odoo opened two additional offices in Belgium, home to the firm’s research and development, support and technical teams.

Today, Pinckaers resides in India with his family. He’s lived there for a year now, working to expand the company’s presence there, hiring more people, increasing marketing and broadening Odoo’s overall partner network.

Odoo had billings of 370 million euros last year and is on track to top 650 million of billings in 2025 — after that, the company is hoping to top the 1 billion-euro billings milestone by 2027. Billings — or the total sum of all invoices for a given year — is Odoo’s preferred metric for tracking annual revenue performance.

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Around 80% of Odoo’s business today accounts for open-source software, with the remaining 20% coming from software licensed for a fee, Pinckaers said. Open source refers to a type of software that allows users to access the underlying code — most often free of charge — which they can then modify and adjust.

In no rush to IPO

Despite Odoo now being at the scale of an IPO-ready business, Pinckaers said he’s in no rush to take the company public. If anything, remaining private has given Odoo flexibility to stay focused on investing for the long term, he said.

Odoo’s private backers aren’t in a rush for the firm to go public, either. Alex Nichols, partner at Alphabet’s CapitalG, told CNBC that he’s not worried about “IPO timing,” adding that factors like public market conditions are ultimately “out of our control.”

Pinckaers built the business to the size it is today primarily by bootstrapping — that is, growing without raising external funding. Odoo hasn’t had to raise primary capital from investors in a decade, opting instead to let early investors and employees sell shares in secondary sales.

The last time Odoo secured primary funding was in 2014, when it raised $10 million in a Series B round. Prior to the latest secondary round, Odoo was most recently valued by investors at 3.2 billion euros.

Odoo’s other backers include the likes of private equity firms Summit Partners, Noshaq, and Wallonie Entreprendre, which all sold a portion of their shares to CapitalG and Sequoia as part of the 500-million-euro investment announced on Wednesday.

Even after selling a portion of its shares, Summit remains Odoo’s largest institutional shareholder. Pinckaers himself has never sold his own personal shares.

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Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand ‘off the charts,’ says Altimeter’s Gerstner

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Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand 'off the charts,' says Altimeter's Gerstner

Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.

President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.

The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.

Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.

Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”

He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.

“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”

WATCH: Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

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YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

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YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok. 

The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.

Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.

The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google

Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement. 

Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.

“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”

WATCH: TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass

TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass

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Tech stocks sink after Trump tariff rollout — Apple heads for worst drop in 5 years

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Tech stocks sink after Trump tariff rollout — Apple heads for worst drop in 5 years

CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

Saul Loeb | Via Reuters

Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.

Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.

Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.

Semiconductor stocks also felt the pain, with Marvell Technology, Arm Holdings and Micron Technology falling more than 8% each. Broadcom and Lam Research dropped 6%, while Advanced Micro Devices declined more than 4% Software stocks ServiceNow and Fortinet fell more than 5% each.

Read more CNBC tech news

The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.

Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.

China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”

The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.

Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.

Evercore ISI's Amit Daryanani on keeping Apple's outperform rating despite tariffs

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