PayPal CEO Hits RSU Vesting 'Jackpot' with 2 Billion Won Stake

According to a January 15 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, at PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), a large tranche of restricted stock units held by CEO Alex Chriss and other senior executives vested and converted into common shares, triggering automatic share disposals to cover tax withholding. About 23,000 RSUs vested for Chriss, raising his directly held share count to over 200,000. Of those newly vested shares, roughly 9,700 were withheld at a price of $57.66 per share—equating to about $560,000—for tax purposes. Diego Scotti, who leads the Consumer Group, and Chief Accounting Officer Chris Nathalie also had portions of their RSUs vest and several thousand shares automatically withheld to satisfy tax obligations. The company emphasized in its filing that these transactions were routine stock-compensation vesting and tax-withholding measures, not voluntary open-market sales by the executives.

Recently, PayPal announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI to integrate its digital wallet and payment network into ChatGPT. Beginning in 2026, this integration will enable users to search for and complete purchases from tens of millions of merchants directly within the chatbot—a move that sent PayPal’s share price sharply higher on the news. At its 2025 Investor Day, PayPal further reinforced its mid- to long-term growth strategy by unveiling plans for a unified merchant platform called PayPal Open and setting a goal for double-digit non-GAAP earnings-per-share growth beyond 2025.

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is a U.S. digital payments company operating in more than 200 countries with over 400 million active accounts and tens of millions of merchants. Since taking the helm in September 2023, CEO Alex Chriss has been driving a transformation focused on boosting profitability and cost efficiency across assets such as Venmo and Braintree, while expanding into high-growth areas like AI-powered and cross-border payments.