Stripe CFO joins the board of $3 billion AI startup Vercel
Vercel
- Vercel said it added Steffan Tomlinson to its board.
- Tomlinson is the CFO of Stripe and has experience taking tech startups public.
- He used to be CFO at several other tech companies, including Palo Alto Networks and Confluent.
Vercel, an AI startup valued at more than $3 billion, just bulked up its board with the addition of a finance executive who has experience taking tech companies public.
Stripe Chief Financial Officer Steffan Tomlinson will serve as a director on Vercel's board, the startup said on Tuesday.
Tomlinson was previously CFO at several other tech startups, guiding Palo Alto Networks, Confluent, and Aruba Networks through the IPO process.
Stripe, one of the world's most valuable startups, has long been mentioned as an IPO candidate. Vercel is earlier in its lifecycle, however the AI startup has been putting some of the early pieces in place to potentially go public someday.
"Steffan's experience leading developer-focused companies from startup 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.
Vercel
Last year, Vercel tapped Marten Abrahamsen as its CFO. He's been building out Vercel's finance, legal, and corporate development teams and systems while leading the startup through a $250 million funding round at a $3.25 billion valuation in May.
"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," Abrahamsen said.
GenAI growth
The generative AI boom has recently powered Vercel's growth. The startup offers AI tools to developers, and earlier this year it surpassed $100 million in annualized revenue.
Vercel's AI SDK, a software toolkit that helps developers build AI applications, was downloaded more than 700,000 times last week, up from about 80,000 downloads a year ago, according to NPM data.
The company's Next.js open-source framework was downloaded 7.9 million times last week, compared to roughly 4.6 million downloads a year earlier, NPM data also shows.
Abrahamsen said they are building a company to one day go public, but stressed that there's no timeline or date set for such a move.
Consumption-based business models
At Stripe and Confluent, Tomlinson gained experience with software that helps developers build cloud and web-based applications — and how these offerings generate revenue.
"Steffan's track record with consumption-based software business models makes him the ideal partner to inform strategic decisions," Rauch said.
Vercel is among a crop of newer developer-focused tech companies that charge based on usage. For instance, as traffic and uptime increase for developers, Vercel generates more revenue, so it's aligned with customers, Abrahamsen told Business Insider.
Similarly, Stripe collects a small fee every time someone makes a payment in an app. Confluent has a consumption-based business model, too.
This is different from traditional software-as-a-service providers, which often charge based on the number of users, or seats. For instance, Microsoft 365 costs a certain amount per month, per user.
Tomlinson also has experience working with developer-focused companies with technical founders, such as the Collison brothers who started Stripe.
