Femi Otedola Doubles Down On His Bet On First Bank; Nigerian Fintech Startup Collapses Quickly After Raising $1 Million; And More Businesses Pay For Claude Than ChatGPT
- Dipo Owolabi
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
Today's headlines is really about control, confidence, and conversion. In Nigeria, Femi Otedola has just committed another ₦43.41 billion to First HoldCo, doubling down on his bet on First Bank and First Holding Company, while Nigerian Fintech startup Chimoney folds shortly after raising $1 million as it ultimately ran out of cash, showing that a good idea can still be unprofitable. In AI, Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in workplace adoption for the first time, and in creator economy land, MrBeast is trying to turn a gigantic audience of 476 million subscribers into a real membership business. The common thread is simple: the next phase of growth is less about hype and more about who can convert scale into staying power. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat! |
Markets as of 13th May 2026.. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Femi Otedola Acquires Over ₦43 Billion (~$30 Million). Worth Of First HoldCo Shares
Femi Otedola has deepened his position in First HoldCo Plc with a fresh share purchase valued at about ₦43.41 billion. Nairametrics reports that the acquisition was executed on the Nigerian Exchange on May 13, 2026, and involved the purchase of just shy of 550 million shares at an average price of ₦79 per share. The trade pushed his holding from over 8.6 billion shares reported in the FY 2025 audited accounts to 8,604,850,139 units, worth a combined $500 Million.
The size of the move matters because it was not just another routine stock purchase. Nairametrics says the deal was the largest single dealing on First HoldCo stock in 2026 so far, and it came at a time when the stock was already seeing heavy attention on the Nigerian Exchange. The article also notes that the company’s year-to-date trading volume had already crossed 2.4 billion shares, showing that the market is actively repricing First HoldCo as ownership changes and investor interest build.
More importantly, the acquisition puts Otedola even closer to full strategic control of a major Nigerian banking group. Nairametrics says his stake now stands at 19.35%, and First HoldCo’s market capitalisation is above ₦3 trillion, which means every incremental move by a chairman of that size can materially shape sentiment around the stock. The signal here is not just wealth deployment; it is conviction, and it tells the market that Otedola is still doubling down on the bank’s long-term value. Naira Metrics
Nigerian Fintech Startup Raises $1 Million But Folds Shortly After
Chimoney, the Nigerian-founded fintech that built cross-border payment infrastructure for businesses, has shut down after running out of capital. TechCabal says the Canada-based startup told customers in a May 1 email that it had stopped processing new transactions and integrations and had begun refunding customer balances. The company’s final operational note was blunt: “As of May 1, 2026, Chimoney has ceased all new transactions and integrations.”
That shutdown is a harsh reminder of how fragile startup infrastructure can be when funding dries up. TechCabal says Chimoney was founded in 2022 by Uchi Uchibeke and had built a single API for cross-border payments that let businesses pay freelancers and vendors in 41 currencies across Africa, North America, and Latin America. It supported bank transfers, mobile money, airtime, gift cards, and stablecoin off-ramps, which made it useful for companies operating across borders.
The numbers show that the company never reached the scale needed to survive long term. TechCabal says Chimoney joined the Techstars Toronto accelerator in 2023 and raised only $280,000 in total funding on Crunchbase’s count, though the founder said the real figure was closer to $1 million. That gap between useful product and durable capital is the core lesson of the shutdown: a fintech can solve a real pain point and still collapse if distribution and funding do not keep up. Tech Cabal
Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in business adoption for the first time, according to Ramp’s AI Index. Ramp says Anthropic’s April adoption rate rose to 34.4% of businesses, while OpenAI fell to 32.3%, a striking reversal from January, when OpenAI had been clearly ahead. The data is based on corporate card and invoice spending across more than 50,000 U.S. businesses, making it one of the clearest real-world snapshots of how companies are actually buying AI services.
The shift is being driven in large part by Claude Code and other enterprise use cases. Ramp says Anthropic has quadrupled business adoption over the last year, while OpenAI’s business adoption barely moved over the same period. That is a major signal for the enterprise market because it suggests businesses are not just experimenting with AI; they are increasingly choosing the vendor they think best fits coding, operations, legal work, research, and cost control.
Even with the headline lead, Ramp is careful not to call Anthropic the permanent winner. The index itself says the AI market is unusually dynamic, and Ramp notes that performance, pricing, compute constraints, and open-source competition can all shift the rankings quickly. Anthropic’s current lead is real, but it should be read as a snapshot of adoption momentum, not a final verdict on the long-term AI race. Business Insider |
MrBeast’s New Goal: Turning His 476 Million Subscribers Into Paying Members
MrBeast is trying to turn scale into revenue by building a membership product around his massive audience. Business Insider reports that Jimmy Donaldson and Beast Industries executives unveiled the plan at an invite-only breakfast in Manhattan, attended by brand and ad executives during TV upfronts week, when legacy media companies like NBCUniversal and Disney compete for advertising budgets. The pitch was clear: creators are no longer just competing for views, they are competing for brand dollars against television and streaming giants.
The membership program is designed to be much more than a fan club. Business Insider says the company wants it to become the “largest membership service in the world”, with early access, exclusive content, and challenges for paying members, plus a philanthropic element tied to the MrBeast brand. Executives also told attendees that MrBeast reaches the equivalent of two Super Bowl audiences a month, which is a reminder that his scale is already well beyond traditional creator benchmarks.
The broader play is diversification. Business Insider says MrBeast is expanding into food this summer, then moving into entertainment, fitness, and gaming, while also pursuing a mobile phone service, a financial-services angle through the recently acquired Step app, and support for his snack business Feastables. He also wants to build out Vyro, a clipping service for brands and creators. In other words, MrBeast is not just trying to monetize subscribers; he is trying to build a multi-vertical consumer company around the audience he already owns. Business Insider
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