One of the American auto industry’s youngest and highest-ranking executives, General Motors’ chief financial officer (CFO) Dhivya Suryadevara, found a new opportunity on Tuesday for Silicon Valley and the technology sector, where she was named CFO of Stripe.
Suryadevara’s journey from the Midwest to California shows the chasm between old school manufacturing and new-age tech.
Stripe, an online payments startup, was established in 2010; GM is more than 100 years older.
While GM reported revenue of $137 billion last year; Stripe in 2018 reported revenue of $529 million. GM has 164,000 workers and Stripe has 2,800 workers. GM has a market cap of $42 billion; Stripe is valued at $36 billion, according to investor website PitchBook, and has raised almost $2 billion from investors.
Suryadevara, who was GM’s CFO for 1-2 years, was held in high regard by Wall Street analysts, who had speculated on her potential to secure a chief executive officer position in an industry unrelated to automobiles.
Her GM compensation package last year amounted to $6.8 million.
Stripe did not mention how much she would be paid.
“I really enjoy leading complex, large-scale businesses, and I hope to use my skills to help accelerate Stripe’s already steep growth trajectory,” Suryadevara said on Tuesday.
GM named John Stapleton, the present CFO of North American operations, as acting global finance chief, effective August 15. Stapleton joined the automaker in 1990 and has held a series of finance roles in the company.
Suryadevara succeeded Chuck Stevens as GM’s CFO in September 2018. Prior to that, she was vice president of corporate finance. She joined the automaker in 2004 as a senior financial analyst in the Treasurer’s Office.
The automaker said it would carry out internal and external searches for a permanent successor to Suryadevara.
