The venture-backed payments company raised an additional $100 million from investment firm Tiger Global. The new cash injection boosts Stripe’s valuation to $22.5 billion, up from $20 billion in September. The start-up has benefited from growth in online payments, attracting investments from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Google’s venture arm Capital G, among others.
Ryan Browne | Kate Rooney
CNBC
Published 9:13 AM ET Wed, 30 Jan 2019
Source: Stripe
Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison
Stripe rides the online payments boom to a $22.5 billion valuation
Multi-billion dollar payments start-up Stripe just got a new cash injection and a bit more valuable.
The company said this week that it raised an additional $100 million from Tiger Global Management, boosting its valuation to $22.5 billion. This round, first reported by the Information, follows a $245 million Series E fundraise announced last fall that put its valuation at $20 billion.
Stripe has become one of the most sought after payment start-ups in Silicon Valley. It’s now one of the most valuable “unicorns” — private firms worth more than $1 billion — in the U.S., beating data analytics firm Palantir’s $20 billion water mark. It’s by far the most valuable private fintech company, with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase trailing behind at an $8 billion valuation, according to CB Insights.
Stripe’s online platform integrates electronic payments and secure transactions, and has become an attractive bet for venture capital as consumers overwhelmingly move to online payments.
In addition to Tiger Global, the San Francisco-based start-up has also attracted investments from Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Google’s venture arm Capital G, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, among others, according to Pitchbook.
“Stripe is rapidly scaling internationally, as well as extending our platform into issuing, global fraud prevention, and physical stores with Stripe Terminal,” a Stripe spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The follow-on funding gives us more leverage in these strategic areas.”
Stripe, whose rivals including Jack Dorsey’s Square and Netherlands-based Adyen, makes software that allows businesses to accept payments over the internet. The start-up was founded in 2010 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, who came up with the idea for Stripe while attending MIT. CEO Patrick Collison announced on Twitter this week that former Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene was being added to the board.
“We’re building Stripe for the long-term,” Collison said on Twitter. “We’re lucky to do so alongside a roster of detail-oriented directors who think that infrastructure revolutions can compound for decades and that operational excellence can be a surprisingly durable competitive advantage.”
