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HR unicorn Deel prepares for IPO as soon as 2026

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Alex Bouaziz, CEO and co-founder of Deel, onstage at the Collision 2022 conference at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada.

Vaughn Ridley | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Human resources software firm Deel said it has hit an annual revenue run rate of $800 million and is ramping up preparations to go public with a view to IPO as early as next year.

The startup, which aims to simplify the process of hiring, paying and managing employees remotely, told CNBC that it hit the milestone after a 70% year-over-year bump in revenue in December. A revenue run rate is an estimation of a company’s future annual revenue, extrapolated from a monthly data point.

Deel has also added to its capitalization table with two new major shareholders following a $300 million secondary share sale conducted last year.

The company said that General Catalyst and an unnamed sovereign wealth fund — which CNBC understands is Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi — joined the round as new investors.

It comes after Deel in 2022 hit a $12 billion valuation. Following the secondary share transaction, the company’s valuation was boosted to $12.6 billion, according to two sources familiar with the matter, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In an interview with CNBC, Deel CEO and co-founder Alex Bouaziz said the company is developing robust financial audits, compliance processes and infrastructure as it looks to ensure it’s in a good position to IPO.

“We are getting ready to go out, potentially next year or a bit later,” Bouaziz told CNBC, adding that the firm recently added two new board members including former Illumina CEO Francis deSouza and former Coupa Chief Financial Officer Todd Ford. “We believe we have the right reasons to go public.”

Bouaziz said that a public listing could help the firm further along on its mission to build a recognizable brand in HR and payroll software.

“When it comes to HR and payroll, I’ve never truly felt like someone captured the essence of a great brand,” he said. “No one really [builds] a brand that you feel resonates with people.”

“This is really what we want to build. This is, I think, a big part of the experience that we can bring to people. Being a public company can reinforce that sentiment, be part of the story and be part of the business,” Bouaziz added.

The CEO said that Deel is under no pressure from its financial backers to go public despite its large size. The firm currently has about 5,000 employees globally.

Founded in 2019, Deel is a platform that helps businesses with HR services such as onboarding, compliance, performance management, payroll and immigration support. It became popular during Covid-19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021, which drove the trend of hiring staff remotely.

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director of General Catalyst, said Deel’s “focus on enabling large enterprises to navigate the complexities of a global workforce fits seamlessly with our mission to back bold ideas that create enduring value.”

Zu Fürstenberg previously backed Deel in a seed investment when she was with European venture capital fund La Famiglia, which merged with General Catalyst in October 2023.

Motion to dismiss ‘baseless’ lawsuit

Against the backdrop of financial milestones and progress toward an IPO, Deel is currently facing litigation over claims that it facilitated money laundering transactions.

Last month, Deel was served a lawsuit in a Florida court which alleges it processed payments without proper licensing and enabled money laundering in relation to illegal payment transactions worth at least $2.27 million made on behalf of a former client, Surge Capital Ventures. It also accuses Deel of facilitating payments to Russia in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Deel strongly denies the claims and has fired back with a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, describing it as “riddled with baseless allegations, gross inaccuracies, conjecture, and downright falsehoods.”

Deel also alleged the suit was part of a “coordinated effort by a major investor in Deel’s primary competitor seeking to tarnish Deel’s stellar reputation.”

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Thomas Grady, is named as the incorporator of Waveling Insurance Services in a Florida Department of State filing. Waveling Insurance Services is now known as Ripple Insurance Services, which is a subsidiary of HR and payroll software firm Rippling. Grady is reportedly an investor in Rippling, according to Florida newspaper Naples Daily News, although CNBC was unable to confirm this.

Neither Thomas Grady nor Rippling were immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Bouaziz told CNBC he feels “pretty confident” about Deel’s chances of dismissing the lawsuit.

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Warren Buffett’s top stock picks come with 15% income bonus in new ETF

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Invest like Buffett: VistaShares CEO on new ETF that follows the investor

In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.

That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway. 

Berkshire is currently the biggest holding in the ETF, at 10.6% of the fund. Other top holdings in the ETF from among the ranks of Berkshire’s biggest bets include Apple, American Express, Kroger, VeriSign, Bank of America, Citigroup, Visa and of course Coca-Cola, a long time favorite of the man known as the Oracle of Omaha.

“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.

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Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.

In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.

“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.

Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”

The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.

So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.

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More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

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People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025. 

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said. 

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.  

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once. 

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.” 

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers. 

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts. 

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