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Two years after going public, Square is now worth more than Twitter

Jack Dorsey’s payments company has edged past Jack Dorsey’s tweeting company.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter
Hey Jack, I bet you paid for that flat white by using Square.
Fairfax Media / Getty
Rani Molla is a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Jack Dorsey’s “other” company, Square, is now worth more than Twitter. As of this afternoon, the mobile payments firm had a market value of $16.5 billion — more than a billion dollars above Twitter’s market cap, according to FactSet.

Dorsey, who founded Square in 2009 after leaving Twitter, returned as Twitter’s CEO about two years ago — right around the time he took Square public. Dorsey remains CEO of both, which ranges from impressive to controversial depending on the day.

Since its IPO, Square’s valuation has grown about four times to nearly $17 billion today. At a $15.3 billion market cap, Twitter is worth nearly 40 percent less than it was on the close of its first trading day about five years ago.

Square stock surged over 4 percent today after an analyst upgrade. Square has thrived thanks to its strong payment business that processed $50 billion in credit card transactions last year. Twitter, meanwhile, is struggling to grow its audience.

Neither company is profitable, though Square had a smaller loss than Twitter last quarter.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.