PayPal removes CEO in sudden shake-up, recruits HP’s top executive as replacement

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When Alex Chriss took over leadership at PayPal from outgoing CEO Dan Schulman in late 2023, he laid out a tech-focused vision centered on tools such as AI and stablecoins. Less than two years later, this vision has fallen short, as PayPal announced on Tuesday it was removing Chriss and replacing him with board chairman Enrique Lores, who currently serves as CEO of . The move follows Chriss’s failure to stop a decline in PayPal’s share price—down roughly 80% from five years ago—and as the company projected lower earnings for 2026.

In a , PayPal made clear it was replacing Chriss due to underperformance, noting: “The pace of change and execution did not meet the board’s expectations.”

Lores’s appointment has done little to reassure the market, which reacted to the bleak earnings news with further selling, pushing PayPal shares down about 17% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, news of Lores’s departure reportedly impacted HP, which named board member Bruce Broussard, a former CEO of , as its interim leader.

PayPal’s shares are now trading around $42, a sharp contrast to 2021 when the stock hit an all-time high of $308. During this period, the company—once a dominant force in online commerce—has seen a growing number of competitors, including and , erode its core payment and checkout business. Despite its vast global reach and key products like Venmo, PayPal has struggled to develop a strategy to keep up.

In a December interview with , Chriss acknowledged that PayPal faced a challenge as it sought to defend its longstanding checkout and peer-to-peer payment business lines while finding new ways to compete.

Shortly before Chriss became CEO, PayPal launched —one of the most talked-about areas in fintech today—but the token, known as PYUSD, has failed to gain significant market share. Currently, PYUSD has a total market cap of around $3.5 billion, compared to approximately $70 billion for USDC, the U.S. market leader backed by Circle and .

Lores, the incoming CEO, will formally start his tenure at PayPal on March 1, with the company’s chief financial and operating officer, Jamie Miller, leading the firm in the interim. In a statement, Lores outlined his broad plans for the company.

“We will further strengthen the culture of innovation needed to drive long-term transformation, balancing this with near-term delivery, executing with greater speed and precision, and holding ourselves accountable for consistent performance quarter after quarter to further establish PayPal’s industry leadership,” said Lores.