Good morning. It’s Jason, helping fill in for Andrew, as he takes some time off after welcoming his second son into the world earlier this week.
I’m back on the East Coast, where I’m based, after co-hosting our 24th annual Brainstorm Tech event in Park City this week. At the conference, I had the opportunity to interview the founders and CEOs of innovative companies big and small, from John Furner of Walmart and Tony Xu of DoorDash, to Jeff Wilke and Chris Barman, who’ve incubated and launched the electric truck startup Slate Auto. And during networking breaks and group meals, I met other technology leaders, many of whom are working on solutions to pressing societal issues.
While the business world and the greater world continue to face myriad challenges, these conversations gave me renewed hope that technology and the people behind it can at least serve as part of the answer.
Now for today’s news.
—Jason Del Rey
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Opendoor bets big on a new CEO, and goes 'founder mode'
Opendoor Technologies is going all in on its new CEO, a former Shopify executive, with an aggressive compensation package that could see him clear $2.78 billion and own nearly 12% of the company. But to earn that, he’ll have to more than triple the share price at a real estate technology company some have dismissed as a buzzy meme stock.
In the meantime, Nejatian will have Opendoor’s founders—Eric Wu and Khosla Ventures’ Keith Rabois—overseeing him on the board. Wu served as Opendoor’s CEO from 2013 to 2022 and chaired the board from 2020 to 2022. Rabois, who served on the boards of Reddit and Yelp and currently serves as a director of Ramp, was appointed chairman.
In a press release, Opendoor said it was “going into founder mode” with Nejatian’s appointment and in luring Rabois and Wu back with seats on the board and new financing. Before joining Shopify, where he was COO, Nejatian cofounded and ran the payments startup Kash; prior to that, he made a brief stop at Facebook as a lead product manager.
One of Nejatian's stock performance awards is designed like a moonshot, with seven stock price hurdles ranging from $9 to $33. The tranches only vest when the stock hits price milestones of $9, $13, $17, $21, $25, and $33.
If Nejatian can hit all those price targets, he’ll be rewarded with compensation valued at $2.78 billion—and he’ll own 11.6% of the company, double the stake Wu held when Opendoor went public through a SPAC in 2020, Farient Advisors’ vice president Eric Hoffmann told Fortune. If he misses those targets, a base salary of $1 will have to do.—Amanda Gerut
Boring Company halts Vegas tunnel work after 'crushing' injury
Boring Company’s tunneling operations in Las Vegas were temporarily suspended after a worker suffered a “crushing injury," spokespeople from the local fire department and OSHA told Fortune on Thursday.
The incident took place on Wednesday evening along Paradise Road, where the Boring Co. has been working on expanding its tunnel system to the Las Vegas airport. The fire department used an on-site crane to lift the worker out of the tunnel. The department said the victim was in stable condition.
Investigations published by Fortune last year found that dozens of employees had been injured during Boring Co. projects, including the construction of the tunnel to the Wynn and Encore resorts on Las Vegas Boulevard, and that the Las Vegas monorail had to be shut down briefly after Boring Co. workers dug too close to its foundation. After Fortune’s reporting, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority started taking a more hands-on role in safety and appointed an employee to oversee their work. The CEO of the LCVCA told Fortune a few weeks ago that he was not aware of any major safety incidents since that appointment.
The Boring Company has recently begun testing self-driving Tesla vehicles, with safety drivers, in the tunnels below the Convention Center.
Boring is still awaiting permits from the city to start construction on a tunnel within city limits that would run below Las Vegas Boulevard. The company is also starting preparations for another tunnel system below the city of Nashville.
The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. —Jessica Mathews
Blockchain lender Figure soars 24% after Nasdaq debut
Blockchain lender Figure Technology is the latest crypto company to go public. On Thursday, Figure began trading on the Nasdaq after raising $787.5 million in its IPO. The company’s shares listed at $25 but soared almost 30% before retreating slightly to close at $31.11, valuing the company at more than $6 billion.
Figure’s business centers around putting mortgages on the blockchain, which the company says speeds up the granting and funding of home loans. The company was founded in 2018. From June 2024 to June of this year, it facilitated about $6 billion in loans, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And from January to June, it generated more than $190 million in revenue and almost $30 million in net income.
“The IPO is one step in a long process to bring blockchain to all aspects of capital markets,” wrote Mike Cagney, cofounder and CEO of Figure, in a letter to investors in the company’s prospectus.
Figure’s Nasdaq debut comes amid a hot IPO market—especially for crypto companies. In June, the stablecoin issuer Circle went public in a blockbuster IPO, and was followed by the crypto exchange Bullish, led by former president of the New York Stock Exchange Tom Farley, which went public in August.
The crypto IPO rush will soon include Gemini, the Winklevoss brothers' exchange, which is set to go public on Friday, as well as potentially crypto ETF firm Grayscale and crypto exchange Kraken. —Ben Weiss
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