Payments giant Stripe acquires team from crypto wallet app Valora

cointelegraph2025-12-11 tarihinde yayınlandı2025-12-11 tarihinde güncellendi

Özet

Payments giant Stripe has acquired the team behind crypto wallet app Valora, a day after launching the testnet for its stablecoin-focused blockchain project, Tempo. Valora CEO Jackie Bona stated the team will join Stripe to contribute expertise in web3 and user-first experiences. Valora, which spun out of Celo development group cLabs in 2021, offers a mobile wallet supporting stablecoins across multiple blockchains. The Valora app will continue operating under cLabs. This move accelerates Stripe's growing blockchain initiatives, particularly Tempo network, which has a $5 billion pre-launch valuation and emphasizes easy stablecoin creation.

Payments giant Stripe has acquired the team from crypto wallet firm Valora, just a day after launching its testnet for its stablecoin-focused blockchain project Tempo.

According to Valora CEO Jackie Bona, the acquisition will see the Valora team join Stripe and work on the firm’s blockchain initiatives.

Valora was founded in mid-2021 after spinning out of Celo development group cLabs and raising $20 million in Series A funding in the process.

The Valora app is a mobile wallet that supports stablecoins and other assets across Celo, Ethereum, Base, Optimism and Arbitrum. Apart from the wallet, the team also developed an open protocol launchpad for Web3 apps geared toward a mobile-native experience.

“Stripe shares our conviction that stablecoins and crypto can dramatically expand who gets to participate in the global economy,” said Bona, adding that “by bringing Valora’s team to Stripe, we’ll be able to contribute our expertise in web3 and user-first experiences to a platform with unparalleled reach.”

It is not explicitly stated what the Valora team will work on; however, Stripe will be tapping a team that has had a strong focus on global payments, digital wallets and user-friendly smartphone-based Web3 apps.

“Through this work, we’ve seen firsthand how access to stablecoins and crypto rails can expand economic opportunity. In the past few months, it became clear that we could accelerate this mission by joining Stripe, one of the world’s leading financial infrastructure platforms,” Bona said.

Source: Jackie Bona

Related: The easiest and safest methods for gifting crypto at Christmas in 2025

The Valora app will continue to function, but its operations and future development will be handed over to cLabs.

Momentum building for Stripe and Tempo

After an on-again-off-again relationship with crypto, Stripe has been making strides in the blockchain space over the past couple of years. Momentum has been building particularly since first unveiling Tempo four months ago in partnership with crypto VC firm Paradigm, with the network already having a $5 billion pre-launch.

The latest move from Stripe comes just a day after Stripe and Paradigm’s layer-1 blockchain project Tempo launched its open testnet.

One of the key features highlighted during the testnet launch was the ease and simplicity of creating stablecoins directly in the browser, among other benefits.

Magazine: 11 critical moments in Ethereum’s history that made it the No.2 blockchain

İlgili Okumalar

Annual Salary of Millions Competing for Electricians, Meta Rushes to Open Its Own Technical School

The AI boom is facing an unexpected bottleneck: a severe shortage of skilled construction workers and electricians. As tech giants like Meta, OpenAI, and Alphabet race to build massive data centers—such as OpenAI's $16 billion "Stargate" project—they are hitting a critical labor wall. The U.S. needs an estimated 130,000 more electricians, 240,000 construction workers, and 150,000 supervisors by 2030 for AI infrastructure alone, but tens of thousands of electrician jobs go unfilled each year. While AI companies offer high premiums, with electricians earning up to $280,000 annually, worker scarcity still causes massive losses—delays on a single project can cost $14.2 million per month. The complexity of building AI data centers, which require immense power (equivalent to powering hundreds of thousands of homes), sophisticated electrical systems, and advanced liquid cooling solutions, demands highly skilled technicians who are in short supply. To combat this, companies are investing heavily in training. Meta has committed $115 million to a free training school offering tuition, housing, and stipends, targeting 5,000 new workers. OpenAI is partnering with unions to secure skilled labor. These efforts are paying off, with a significant rise in Gen Z interest in trade schools over college. However, the power demands are staggering. AI data centers are driving a rapid surge in electricity consumption, projected to account for up to 12% of U.S. power use by 2028 and raising costs for consumers. Furthermore, the construction boom is project-based, leading to a potential future glut of trained workers once building peaks, which could depress wages industry-wide. The race for AI supremacy now depends as much on skilled hands as on advanced chips.

marsbit1 saat önce

Annual Salary of Millions Competing for Electricians, Meta Rushes to Open Its Own Technical School

marsbit1 saat önce

OpenAI No Longer Sells Its Most Expensive Model for Profit

OpenAI is shifting its business strategy away from promoting its most expensive, flagship models for every task. Recent price cuts—80% for GPT-5.6 Luna and 20% for Terra—signal a deeper change: the company now actively advises users that many tasks don't require the most powerful model. Instead, OpenAI recommends a tiered approach: use the high-end GPT-5.6 Sol for complex planning and analysis, then delegate execution to cheaper models like Luna. This mirrors moves by Anthropic, which recently launched Claude Opus 5 at half the price of its top model, Fable 5. Both companies are de-emphasizing flagship models as primary revenue drivers, using them instead for brand prestige and technological showcases. The industry is entering a "mass-market" phase, similar to automotive, where high-volume, cost-effective models handle daily operations and drive scale. OpenAI's price reductions are partly enabled by AI models themselves optimizing underlying code and infrastructure, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of efficiency gains and cost reduction. Competition is shifting from "who is smartest" to "who offers the best value." The goal is no longer selling individual models but fostering widespread API adoption and ecosystem lock-in. By making AI calls cheap and ubiquitous, companies like OpenAI aim to become the indispensable, utility-like infrastructure powering automated workflows—the "water and electricity" of software, quietly embedded everywhere.

marsbit1 saat önce

OpenAI No Longer Sells Its Most Expensive Model for Profit

marsbit1 saat önce

İşlemler

Spot
活动图片