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Jack Dorsey's Square is now a majority owner in Tidal, the music streaming service owned by Jay-Z. Here's where their friendship started and everything that's happened since. (SQ)

Jay-Z Jack DorseyKevin Mazur/Getty Images for City of Hope; David Becker/Getty Images

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Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z are officially in business together, cementing a relationship that seems to have formed on the beaches of Hawaii and off the coast of the Hamptons.

Square and Tidal announced on Thursday that the fintech company would take a majority stake in the music-streaming platform. The widely anticipated deal was first reported last December after several photos surfaced of the two moguls vacationing together. 

According to The New York Times' Katherine Rosman, the duo started hashing out the deal beginning "a few months ago." 

Jesse Dorogusker, an executive at Square who will lead Tidal in the interim, told The Times that the deal "started as a conversation between the two of them" and that "they found that sense of common purpose."

Though it's unclear when the two moguls met, Dorsey has admired Jay-Z's business acumen since at least 2015, and in the wake of the deal, the two men have publicly praised each other as visionary leaders.

Here's where their friendship began and everything that's happened since. 

Jay-Z is a rapper and business tycoon worth $1 billion.Mike Blake/Reuters

The 51-year-old mogul grew up in the Marcy housing project in Brooklyn, New York, and launched his rap career as a teenager. He founded Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995 after he was unable to find a major label that would sign him. 

His rap career has since netted him 22 Grammys and millions in earnings, but he has also launched multiple other business ventures: the clothing company Rocawear, which he sold for $204 million in 2007; a stake in D'Ussé, a cognac made by Bacardi; and Tidal, the music streaming service he bought for $56 million in 2015. 

He recently sold half of Armand de Brignac, a champagne company he purchased in 2014, to LVMH, the French luxury house that also owns Dom Pérignon. 

In addition, he founded entertainment company Roc Nation in 2008 which is home to artists like Rihanna and Alicia Keys and has a major deal with the NFL. 

He became the first billionaire in hip-hop in 2019. 



Jack Dorsey is the billionaire CEO of both Twitter and Square.Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The 44-year-old dual CEO cofounded Twitter in 2006 and was booted from the chief executive role two years later. He stayed on as chairman of the board and returned to the helm of the social networking firm in 2015 — in the intervening years, Twitter went public, making Dorsey a billionaire.

In 2009, he founded Square, which let business owners more easily accept credit card payments. The fintech firm went public in 2015 and is now where the majority of Dorsey's wealth derives from. In April 2020, Dorsey announced that he would put $1 billion of his Square equity into a fund that supports coronavirus relief and other aid efforts. 

Dorsey was nearly ousted from the CEO role at Twitter once again in early 2020 by hedge fund Elliott Management, which argued that Dorsey wasn't focused enough on the company due to his other job at Square. But he hung onto his title and remains at the helm of Twitter.

Dorsey is currently worth an estimated $12.5 billion



Dorsey appears to have admired Jay-Z since at least 2015, when he tweeted at the rapper about how much he was enjoying Tidal.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/592764218362953729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I appreciate & respect people who depart from their strengths and take on new challenges. Been using Tidal & dig it! https://t.co/KY8TBJjrfO

 



Dorsey has gotten involved with Jay-Z's philanthropic endeavors. In April, he teamed up with Jay-Z and Rihanna to create $6.3 million in grants to support coronavirus relief efforts.Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Source: Clara Lionel Foundation



In May, Dorsey donated $10 million to Reform Alliance, a nonprofit focused on prison reform. The organization was founded by Jay-Z, rapper Meek Mill, and billionaire Michael Rubin.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Reform Alliance

Source: Rolling Stone



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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SEE ALSO: Kanye West calls social-media apps like Facebook and Instagram 'modern-day cigarettes,' says his conversations with Mark Zuckerberg were 'completely different' from his talks with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, his favorite founder

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