Stripe, the payments juggernaut once valued at $95 billion, cut about 40 employees last week in the company's latest effort to squeeze more efficiency out of its operation.

When asked for comment, Stripe spokesperson Sheryl So directed Payments Dive to a story about the cuts by technology media site The Information. “We’ve made a series of structural changes within our People team to better align with the evolving needs of Stripe’s business,” another Stripe spokesperson told that publication. “These changes are never easy, and we had to say goodbye to about 40 very talented employees, in areas like recruiting.”

The job cuts come just weeks after Stripe bought the analytics firm Okay in May in an effort to make its software engineers more efficient.

Stripe also raised $6.5 billion in March, to address issues such as employee liquidity and tax obligations. Notably, the company’s valuation at that time was just $50 billion, a 47% drop from the valuation it received in 2021.

Late last year, Stripe cut about 14% of its total workforce. For that round of cuts, CEO Patrick Collison wrote a public letter to employees detailing the move, and explained severance benefits being offered. This time, there was no such note on the company’s press page.

Stripe’s statement didn’t identify other areas where there may have been cuts, beyond the mention of recruiting. Recruiting and other less technical parts of companies have been the hardest hit areas in the recent tech job cuts. Those areas tend to be female-dominated, meaning that women have been disproportionately laid off, according to a report by the media outlet Axios. 

Diversity, equity and inclusion departments have been also been significantly pared, according to a report from the media outlet Bloomberg.

By James Pothen on July 7, 2023
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