Dec 18, 2024

The CFO of the world’s “largest start-up” will join Vercel’s board as the company looks to use $250 million in fresh funding to build out generative AI-enabled tools. Published Dec. 18, 2024 Dive Brief: Stripe CFO Steffan Tomlinson has been appointed to the board of directors for AI start-up Vercel, the company announced in a Tuesday press release. Tomlinson’s appointment comes as the San Francisco, California-based Vercel — which provides cloud infrastructure and other tools for software developers — looks to continue building out its technology suite following the close of a $250 million Series E funding round in May, giving it a valuation of $3.25 billion , according to a company announcement at the time. Stripe, alongside companies including online furniture brand Wayfair and clothing brand Under Armour, is a Vercel customer, according to the May release. “Steffan’s financial expertise and leadership experience come at a pivotal moment for Vercel as we scale our enterprise presence and build on our momentum,” Vercel CFO Marten Abrahamsen said in a statement sent to CFO Dive. “I’m excited to welcome Steffan to Vercel's Board of Directors as we accelerate Vercel’s growth journey." Dive Insight: Tomlinson’s appointment follows after Vercel appointed Abrahamsen, previously the CFO for small business capital solutions provider Fundbox, as its CFO in July 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Tomlinson’s experience “leading developer-focused companies from start-up to public markets makes him an ideal addition to Vercel’s Board of Directors as we continue to put our products in the hands of every developer,” Vercel CEO and founder Guillermo Rauch said in a statement included in the release. An alum of Big Tech firms including Google and Palo Alto Networks, Tomlinson has served as finance chief for San Francisco, California-based payments processor Stripe since September 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. His previous roles include stints as CFO for Palo Alto Networks and as CFO, Google Cloud & Technical Infrastructure for Google. Vercel’s move to add Tomlinson to its board comes as the company hopes to make a splash in the generative AI space — following in the footsteps of Stripe, a darling of the payments world and one of the world’s largest start-ups. “What Stripe did for payments, Vercel is doing for the cloud — building a scalable, secure, developer-first platform,” Vercel CEO and founder Guillermo Rauch said in a statement included in the release. Vercel has earmarked its newest round of funding for the further development of its generative AI products, including its “v0” tool — which utilizes generative AI prompts to help developers code, according to their May announcement. Vercel will be building out its tools as funding continues to flood into the generative AI space — funding for AI companies across various sectors, including robotics, security and healthcare, reached over $14 billion last month , according to data from Crunchbase. That figure represents the majority of venture funding spent in November, which hit $28 billion, Crunchbase said. In a notable GenAI round, investors also recently funneled $8.6 billion into AI data intelligence company Databricks in a Series J, overshooting the $6.6 billion raise by ChatGPT creator OpenAI to take the crown of the largest single VC raise seen this year, according to data from Pitchbook. While funding has remained robust, however, mega-rounds such as those seen by Databricks and OpenAI have left some experts questioning both the pace of such funding and the fate of smaller generative AI start-ups — which might begin to lose out on future funding as investors begin to drift to more proven bets in the space, CFO Dive previously reported. The size of such rounds also means generative AI start-ups will need to raise exponentially more funding to avoid “down rounds,” which can constrict their valuation and further hamper the flow of future capital — an issue that may be familiar to Tomlinson as CFO for Stripe. While the payments processor reached a $95 billion valuation in 2021 thanks to the spike in e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic, post-pandemic shifts — including a rightsizing in the retail world, inflation, and geopolitical upheaval — have since impacted the rate of growth for the company, according to a recent report by Quartz. Stripe is currently courting a deal with Sequoia Capital which would place it at a valuation of $70 billion — somewhere between its $95 billion 2021 valuation and the $50 billion valuation it saw in 2023 — which would enable early investors to sell their shares to the venture capital firm, Quartz said.