Stripe has reached a valuation of $159 billion, a jump of more than 70% in one year. The new valuation follows the approval of a public offering of shares aimed at employees, a move that, in practice, allows the company to remain private while providing liquidity to its staff, according to the Financial Times (FT).
With this new valuation, Stripe becomes the sixth most valuable private company on the planet, according to CB Insights. It is behind OpenAI, Bytedance, SpaceX, Anthropic, and xAI.
The strategy reduces the pressure for a potential IPO, which has been on the agenda for years for the company founded 15 years ago by brothers John and Patrick Collison.
According to the Financial Times, John has been explicit: an IPO is not among the top priorities at the moment. In Stripe's view, structural forces such as the advancement of artificial intelligence and the expansion of stablecoins are more urgent and strategic.
This growth thesis explains the appetite of investors like Thrive Capital, Coatue, and Andreessen Horowitz, who agreed to buy shares from current and former employees in the new offering. Stripe itself also used its own capital to acquire some of these shares.
The financial backdrop reinforces the logic. The company processed $1.9 trillion in payments in 2025, a 34% year-over-year increase, driven by a wave of AI startups and large corporate clients — including names like Nvidia and Microsoft. According to the Financial Times, Stripe also reported profitability for the second consecutive year.
Another relevant factor has been internationalization. More than half of the company's new clients in the last year were outside the US, reflecting the explosion of new AI tools that facilitate the creation of global software. In the fintech universe, the argument is similar: newer models are born with international DNA, largely due to the "borderless" nature of digital assets.
In this scenario, Stripe is reaping the rewards of an early bet. In 2024, it acquired the Bridge platform, specializing in stablecoins—digital assets pegged to currencies like the dollar—for US$1.1 billion. After the approval of the Genius Act, which formalized the regulation of stablecoins in the US, the volume traded on Bridge quadrupled in 2025, according to data cited by the Financial Times.
Based in Dublin, the company has argued that the European Union should not lag behind on this issue. European lawmakers are moving forward with a digital euro, but Stripe argues that stablecoins—currently largely backed by the dollar—already have strong use cases in remittances and new financial application models. According to John Collison, there is a risk that Europe will lose ground if it moves at a slow pace.
The executive also believes in the rapid adoption of so-called "agent-driven payments": transactions conducted by AI agents on behalf of users. This is especially true for low-value purchases, such as automatically restocking the pantry with missing ingredients. For Stripe, this type of experience reduces friction—and therefore accelerates sales conversion.
