Finance · Profile from Finance Research Companion
Block
The company Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey founded in 2009 as Square, around a white plastic card reader that plugged into a phone's headphone jack and let anyone accept a credit card. It grew into two businesses that share a balance sheet but behave very differently: Square, a point-of-sale, payments and lending platform for small and mid-sized sellers, and Cash App, a consumer wallet with ~59m monthly transacting users that now earns more gross profit than the merchant side. Along the way it bought Afterpay (2022) for buy now, pay later, made bitcoin a corporate strategy, renamed itself Block (2021), paid ~$295m to federal and state regulators over Cash App's fraud and anti-money-laundering controls (2025), and in February 2026 cut more than 4,000 jobs, about 40% of its staff, in what Dorsey described as an AI-driven reorganization. 2025 gross profit was ~$10.36bn.
At a glance
- Founded
- February 2009, San Francisco, as Square, Inc.; reader and app launched publicly in 2010; renamed Block, Inc. effective December 10, 2021 (company)
- Founders
- Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter) and Jim McKelvey (glass artist and entrepreneur from St. Louis)
- Headquarters
- Oakland, California (moved from San Francisco); describes itself as "remote-first" since 2020 (verify current formal HQ)
- Ownership / structure
- Public company (NYSE: XYZ since January 21, 2025; previously SQ). Dual-class shares; Dorsey holds Class B shares with ten votes each (verify current voting share). Added to the S&P 500 in July 2025 (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Jack Dorsey, co-founder, "Block Head" and chair; Amrita Ahuja, CFO and COO (verify titles). Dorsey moved Block from business-unit general managers to a functional organization in 2024 and ran Square directly after Square head Alyssa Henry left in 2023 (reported)
- Segments / products
- Square: POS hardware and software, card acquiring (payment facilitator), Square Loans, Square Banking, payroll, marketing and vertical software for restaurants, retail and services. Cash App: P2P transfers, Cash App Card (debit), direct deposit, savings, stock and bitcoin trading, Cash App Borrow, Afterpay. Other: Afterpay/Clearpay, TIDAL (music streaming), Bitkey (bitcoin wallet), Proto (bitcoin mining hardware)
- Scale
- Cash App ~59m monthly transacting actives (December 2025 and June 2026, +3% y/y); Square gross payment volume ~$72.8bn in Q2 2026 (+13%) (company)
- Revenue and profit
- 2025 gross profit ~$10.36bn (+17%), of which Cash App ~$6.34bn (+21%) (10-K). Q2 2026 gross profit ~$3.17bn (+25%): Cash App ~$1.97bn (+31%), Square ~$1.16bn (+13%); 2026 guidance raised to ~$12.51bn (August 2026). Revenue is much larger than gross profit (~$24bn in 2024) because bitcoin sales are booked gross (company)
- Capital / regulatory status
- State-licensed money transmitter (all US states, plus NYDFS BitLicense); Square Financial Services, a Utah-chartered, FDIC-insured industrial loan company, opened in 2021 and originates Square Loans and, since 2025, Cash App Borrow. Cash App Card is issued by a partner bank (Sutton Bank) and processed through Marqeta (reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the Square reader (2009–10); Square Cash and Cash App (2013–); IPO below the last private valuation (2015); the bitcoin strategy and treasury purchases (2018–26); the industrial bank (2021); Afterpay (2022); CFPB, state and NYDFS settlements (2025); layoffs and the 2026 AI restructuring
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2009
Square Reader and the Payfac Model
Founding / launch
2013
Square Cash and the Rise of Cash App
Launch
2015
IPO Below the Private Valuation
IPO
2020
Bitcoin Strategy and Treasury Purchases
Pivot (strategy) / investment
2021
Square Financial Services Industrial Bank
Launch (bank charter)
2022
Afterpay Acquisition
Acquisition
2025
CFPB State and NYDFS Settlements
Regulatory settlement
2026
AI Restructuring and the 40 Percent Cut
Restructuring