Headcount at PayPal’s decade-old investment unit has collapsed to two, with bank Jefferies drafted in to explore selling off its portfolio positions
PayPal is winding down PayPal Ventures, the corporate investment arm it launched a decade ago, as new CEO Enrique Lores presses ahead with a broad overhaul of the payments firm, Fortune has reported.
The unit’s headcount has fallen from more than 10 in late 2025 to just two, according to an archived version of its website cited by Fortune, and the page listing its team is no longer live. PayPal has also brought in investment bank Jefferies to weigh selling some of its positions on the secondary market, one source told the publication.
A company spokesperson confirmed the review, saying PayPal was “exploring strategic options” for the venture arm as it works to sharpen its focus, and declined to offer further detail. Jefferies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A decade of fintech bets
PayPal set up its venture arm in 2016, a year after eBay spun the company off as a standalone business. Investing directly off PayPal’s balance sheet, the team has backed more than 80 companies across three funds worth over $850m combined.
Its portfolio took in open banking firm Plaid and crypto custodian Anchorage Digital, while earlier exits ran to Bill.com‘s 2021 acquisition of expense management startup Divvy.
The fund had recently swung into the black for the group. Its holdings added 10 cents to PayPal’s $1.53 earnings per share in Q4 2025, reversing a four-cent drag a year earlier, according to the firm’s February earnings release. Closing it leaves PayPal without the kind of in-house venture operation still run by the likes of Google and Microsoft.
‘Recommit to the fundamentals’
The wind-down follows a change at the top. Former CEO Alex Chriss stepped down in February after a near-three-year tenure that saw PayPal’s share price fall more than 30%, with the board worried the company was losing ground to rivals such as Stripe and Apple and their own checkout products. The pace of change and execution, the board said at the time, had not matched its expectations.
Lores, who joined from consumer hardware group HP, has moved fast to reshape the business. He has carved consumer app Venmo into its own vertical, reorganised senior leadership and set out a deep cost-cutting drive in May, with reports pointing to PayPal shedding around a fifth of its workforce over the next two to three years.
On a May earnings call, Lores said the firm needed to accelerate “AI adoption” and “recommit to the fundamentals,” while Chief Financial and Operating Officer Jamie Miller told investors PayPal was targeting at least $1.5bn in savings over the next two to three years.
