Stripe, Plaid and other fintech alums are congregating at a rising AI coding firm
At Stripe's 'Sessions' event in London earlier this year, the fintech's EMEA chief risk officer Conor McNamara sung the praises of AI coding firm Cursor. He said the firm had "high leverage per employee" in 2024, making average revenues of $5m per employee at a headcount of 60. This year, though, Cursor has been rapidly growing, and hiring from its admirers.
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According to LinkedIn, Cursor's headcount today is in the hundreds, and features a number of new faces with fintech experience. Ryo Lu, a former Stripe product designer, joined Cursor as its head of design in February. Last month, the startup hired Jordan McDonald as a recruiting lead; she spent six years recruiting at Stripe and was latterly its head of leadership and executive recruiting.
Recently, though, Cursor has made a number of senior hires from Plaid, another payments infrastructure firm known for its high pay. Tom Daniels, Plaid's chief information security officer, left to join Cursor as its CISO. Daniels brought with him Roy Xu, a staff security software engineer at Plaid, who he previously worked with at Square, another payments firm.
Cursor also hired Nathan Tindall, a director of engineering at Plaid that spent the last nine years working for the fintech. Announcing his arrival last week, Tindall said Cursor is still a "small, incredibly talented team," but that it's also actively hiring. Max Zheng, a staff engineer and tech lead for data infrastructure at Plaid, also joined Cursor in September.
Finance is in the DNA of Cursor's young founding team. The firm's CEO Michael Truell, interned twice at quant hedge fund Two Sigma before starting Cursor as a graduate. Arvid Lunnemark interned at both Stripe and Jane Street, although he shockingly announced his departure from the firm last month. Similarly, there are a number of finance alums in OpenAI's founding team including Greg Brockman, OpenAI's current president and Stripe's former CTO.
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