The Pulse #87: Stripe’s investment in reliability, by the numbers
The Fintech giant spends more on running test suites than Agoda does for all its infra. Plus, why taking out a loan for equity can backfire, and why did Donald Trump’s social media company use a SPAC?
The Pulse is a series covering insights, patterns, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.
Today, we cover:
Industry pulse. The EU’s AI regulation; Reddit’s successful IPO; No raises at Amazon, and more.
Stripe’s investment in reliability, by the numbers. Stripe uses more hardware just to run their test suite (500,000 CPU cores) than travel booking platform Agoda’s complete infrastructure footprint. And more interesting details straight from the Fintech giant.
SPACs and Truth Social. 2020-2021 saw a boom in tech companies sidestepping the IPO process to get listed on public markets by merging with a “shell company.” Donald Trump’s company followed this exact same path: and now the company is worth almost as much as Reddit, despite having less than 1% of Reddit’s revenue.
Loans to exercise Bolt options early was a terrible idea. The cofounder and former CEO of the one-click-checkout offered loans to employees for the early exercising of stock options in the company. He touted it as the “most employee-friendly options program possible,” and convinced more than half of staff to sign up. He ignored warnings about the risks of this from peers – who were right.