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- Stripe said to eye potential PayPal acquisition
Stripe said to eye potential PayPal acquisition
Bay Area Times
February 25, 2026
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Top stories today:
- Stripe said to eye potential PayPal acquisition
- Anthropic’s Claude Cowork gets plugins for HR, investment banking
- Anthropic given Fri. deadline by DOJ to back down on military-use
- Meta secures $100B+ AMD Instinct deal for up to 6GW GPUs
- Claude Code rolls out Remote Control for mobile, web sessions
- Trump touts economy, floats modest policy shifts in State of the Union
0. Data and calendar
All values as of 6 AM ET / 3 AM PT, other than S&P500 and NASDAQ close (4 PM ET / 1 PM PT).
All times are ET.
Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):
1. Stripe said to eye potential PayPal acquisition
PayPal closed +7% Tue. on the news, giving it a $43B market value:
Stripe has reportedly expressed preliminary interest in acquiring PayPal or its assets.
Deliberations are early and may not lead to a transaction.
PayPal has struggled to modernize its payments tech as Apple and Alphabet gained share.
Stripe reached a $159B valuation in an employee share sale backed by Thrive, Coatue, and a16z
Stripe said it is prioritizing the AI and stablecoin “inflection point” over pursuing an IPO.
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3. Anthropic unveils Claude Cowork updates with plugins for HR, investment banking, design
The plugins turn Claude into specialized agents for different roles and departments, Anthropic said.
Business customers can customize plugins to match their organizational standards.
Software stocks saw quick swings during Anthropic’s launch event.
At least +2% in FactSet, S&P and Moody’s shares following the announcement.
300K+ business users use Anthropic’s models to streamline workplace tasks.
4. Anthropic given Fri. deadline by DOJ to back down on military-use limits
