John Collison, Co-Founder of Stripe.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Stripe, a provider of online payment technology, announced on Sunday that it has raised a new $ 600 million round of funding that values the company at $ 95 billion – nearly three times the last reported valuation of $ 36 billion as of April 2020, according to data from PitchBook.
Stripe, which makes software that allows businesses to accept payments over the Internet, plans to invest the new capital in its European operations, the company said in a press release. Thirty-one of the 42 countries in which Stripe operates are in Europe, and President and Co-Founder John Collison identified Ireland – where its headquarters are located – as a specific area of focus.
Founded more than a decade ago, Stripe is by far the most valuable private fintech company today, with Robinhood valued at approximately $ 11.7 billion after investors penned the company a $ 3 billion check amidst the GameStop chaos. this year.
Stripe has seen dazzling growth during the pandemic as its revenues are largely related to the growth in online shopping. In his previous round of funding last April, Stripe was asked to highlight the Covid-19 outbreak as “pushing the economy online” and said “several years of offline-to-online migration are compressed into several weeks”.
“We are investing in the infrastructure that will boost internet trade in 2030 and beyond,” wrote Finance Director Dhivya Suryadevara, who joined the company in August after stepping down from her role as CFO of General Motors. “The pandemic has taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieved – and paid for, online, but the Internet is still not the engine of global economic progress that it could be.”
In December, the company launched banking services through partnerships with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Barclays and Evolve Bank & Trust.
But despite its soaring growth and valuation, the company remained closed about the prospect of a Wall Street debut, as John Collison told CNBC last year that the company has “no plans” to go public immediately.
Primary investors in the new Series H Round include Allianz, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). Past investors have included Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Alphabet’s late stage investment arm, Capital G, among others.
Earlier this year, Stripe invested $ 102 million in a Series B round for Fast – a smaller online checkout company based in San Francisco. Stripe, who also led the startup’s Series A, is the underlying payment rail for Fast’s checkout product.
Stripe is a six-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company that landed # 1 on the list in 2020.
Correction: The first paragraph of this story has been updated to reflect that Stripe’s latest valuation is $ 95 billion.