Dive Brief:

• Dhivya Suryadevara, CFO of General Motors since 2018, is departing the automaker to lead finance at online payments provider Stripe. 

• In an announcement Tuesday, Detroit-based GM named the company's North America CFO, John Stapleton,  as acting global CFO while it searches for a permanent replacement. GM said Suryadevara was leaving for an "external opportunity outside the automotive industry." 

• "I’m very excited to join Stripe at a pivotal time for the company," Suryadevara said in a statement. "Stripe's mission to increase the [gross domestic product] of the internet is more important now than ever. I really enjoy leading complex, large-scale businesses and I hope to use my skills to help accelerate Stripe’s already steep growth trajectory."

Dive Insight:

"Dhivya is a rare leader who has run an industry-leading leviathan but also gets excited about enabling the brand-new products and the yet-to-be invented products, too," said John Collison, co-founder of San Francisco-based Stripe. "She has the expertise and the instincts to help steer Stripe through our growth in the years ahead."

Suryadevara joins Stripe during a "marked shift to online commerce," the company said, adding it will soon have paid out $10 billion to customers who have joined Stripe since March.

Suryadevara spent 15 years at GM, beginning her tenure as an analyst for the treasurer's office in New York in 2005. Since then, she has served as a fixed income manager, investment strategy manager, chief investment officer, and vice president of corporate finance, according to her LinkedIn profile.  

While leading corporate finance, Suryadevara led the 2017 sale of GM's European business, and was "heavily involved" in acquiring driverless-car startup Cruise Automation in 2016 for about $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Cruise last year was valued at about $19 billion.

As CFO, Suryadevara oversaw a cost-cutting push, the Journal said, and took a lead role in restructuring U.S. operations, closing several factories and initiating thousands of salaried layoffs. Additionally, Suryadevara “emphasized GM’s [need] to boost free cash flow, believing sluggish cash generation was partly the reason for GM’s languishing stock price.”

"Dhivya has been a transformational leader in her tenure as CFO," GM CEO Mary Barra said. "She has helped the company strengthen our balance sheet, improve our cost structure, focus on cash generation and drive the right investments for our future." 

Stapleton has worked in GM's finance department since 1990, in such roles as VP of finance for GM Canada, treasurer and operations finance director, VP of performance improvement and CFO of global manufacturing. Stapleton has headed finance for North America, GM’s largest market, since 2014.