Sign at the entrance to a Capital One bank branch in...

(Erik McGregor/Getty Images)

That’s a pretty big credit card bill!

Capital One and Discover jump after getting green light to close their $35 billion megamerger

The tie-up will create the sixth-largest US bank and could reshape the credit card landscape.

4/21/25 2:52PM

Shares of Capital One and Discover ticked higher on Monday, defying the broader market slump, after US banking regulators signed off on their $35 billion megamerger.

The approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, which landed on Friday during the stock market holiday, cleared the final regulatory hurdle for the deal. It paves the way for Capital One to absorb Discover and become the sixth-largest US bank, with more than $650 billion in assets. The deal was first announced in February of last year.

As part of the approval, Capital One agreed to comply with an existing consent order including a $100 million penalty Discover was hit with for overcharging certain interchange fees between 2007 and 2023.

More than just a size boost, the merger gives Capital One something it’s never had: its own card network. Discover’s payment network is one of the few that rival Visa and Mastercard(the largest credit card processors in the world), giving the company a stronger hand in a tightly consolidated space.

The deal could help spark optimism for other bank stocks — especially if it signals that the Trump administration is taking a more merger-friendly stance after recent market volatility cast doubt on the dealmaking space. Capital One expects the deal to close in May, pending standard market conditions.

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Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”