Hi all, Julie here subbing in for Cokie in our “Friday” newsletter. We were planning on skipping this week, but there was a ton of pretty big fintech news so we decided to do a quick piece before you guys take a few days off before the last few weeks of 2020. On behalf of all of us at FTT, let me just say that we are extremely grateful to each and every member of our community. It is because of you that we get to do what we love each and every day. God bless.
News and Funding
Square buys Credit Karma Tax and DOJ approves Intuit purchase of Credit Karma. Well, it finally happened. The folks at Credit Karma and Intuit can finally relax this holiday season as what was once looking like a 50-50 shot has now been approved thanks to Square swooping in and buying Credit Karma Tax for $50M.
Stripe might be worth $100B soon. I tend to agree with Casey Newton’s tweet here. It’s much harder to find reasons that Stripe isn’t worth this much than reasons that it is. According to a Bloomberg report. Stripe is in early talks for a funding round valuing the company at as much as $100B.
Marqeta is looking at a $10B IPO in 2021. Marqeta is such an interesting case study. Struggles for years to really get going, but then boom, they get their sh*t together and the pieces fall into place. So, after a round that valued it at $4B earlier this year, it wants to more than double that in an IPO in the not so distant future. Kudos, my friends.
Metromile teams up with Mark Cuban and Chamath for a SPAC. The pay-per-mile auto insurer is the latest company to look at the SPAC route. Though it laid off a large chunk of staff earlier this year during the pandemic, could benefit from people not driving as much and looking to save money on car insurance, some argue. Chamath went as far as to tweet: “Buffett had Geico. I pick @Metromile.”
HMBradley and Current raise new rounds. Founders of these two startups can take some time off from pitching this holiday season, with $18.25M and $131M rounds, respectively. I’m excited to see what happens in the new year for these companies as they see significant growth and capital to close out 2020.
Bitcoin record highs. I blame Cokie. She tells people she’s bullish and suddenly everyone wants to buy Bitcoin again. First stop $19K, next stop, the moon!
