Stripe: What It Does, Who Runs It, Funding and News

Stripe is a private company that sells payments and financial software to businesses, from startups to large public companies. Patrick Collison and John Collison founded it in 2009, and Stripe's 2025 annual letter announcement says businesses on Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in total volume in 2025, up 34% from 2024.

Stripe is not listed on any stock exchange. Its valuation is set by private share sales, most recently in a February 2026 tender offer for employees at $159 billion. The sections below cover the key facts, what Stripe sells, who leads it, how it has been funded and what it has announced since spring 2025.

Stripe key facts

YC's page gives a team size but Stripe's own about page doesn't publish a headcount, so treat 7,000 as YC's figure rather than a company filing. As a private company, Stripe has no public annual report to check it against.

What Stripe does

Stripe builds software that businesses plug into their websites, apps and stores to take payments and manage money. Its about page describes the work as "programmable financial infrastructure." The Stripe homepage groups the products roughly like this:

• Payments. Online and in-person payments, including Checkout, Payment Links, Link (Stripe's saved-payment wallet) and Terminal card readers. The homepage lists support for 135+ currencies and payment methods.
• Billing and revenue. Subscriptions, invoicing, usage-based billing, tax and revenue recognition. The homepage says Stripe Billing manages over 200 million active subscriptions.
• Platforms. Connect, for software companies and marketplaces that embed payments for their own users, plus Capital for financing.
• Money management. Issuing (card programs), Treasury business accounts, Global Payouts, and stablecoin and crypto products. The homepage notes that Stripe is not a bank and that its checking accounts are provided by Fifth Third Bank.
• Fraud and identity. Radar for fraud screening and Identity for verification.

YC's page describes Stripe's customers as businesses of all sizes. The February 2026 announcement says Stripe's products power 90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 80% of the Nasdaq 100, and the February 2025 announcement said it served half of the Fortune 100. Much of its recent product work targets AI companies and payments made by AI agents.

Who runs Stripe

Patrick Collison is cofounder and CEO, and John Collison is cofounder and president, as Stripe described them at its April 2026 Sessions conference. Other senior leaders named in Stripe's own announcements:

Each title above is as of the announcement linked beside it. Stripe's most recent statement on the CFO role is the August 2023 announcement that Steffan Tomlinson would join as chief financial officer.

Stripe funding and valuation

Stripe has raised venture money in lettered rounds and, since 2024, has set its valuation through yearly tender offers, in which investors, and in some years Stripe itself, buy shares from current and former employees. A tender offer gives employees cash for their shares; it is not new money for running the business. The table lists the rounds and tenders with amounts or valuations Stripe or major reporting published.

The Series I valuation of $50 billion was down from the $95 billion of the 2021 round. Its announcement said Stripe did not need that capital to run its business. In February 2025, John Collison told CNBC that Stripe had "no near-term IPO plans," and the 2025 annual letter announcement says Stripe "remained robustly profitable" in 2025, without giving a profit figure.

Stripe acquisitions

Stripe's recent acquisitions add billing, credit and AI infrastructure. Of the three below, Stripe's newsroom had announced completion only of Metronome as of late October 2026.

Stripe didn't state prices for any of the three. The Irish Times, reporting in August 2026, described the OpenRouter deal as worth more than $7 billion. Parafin's platform clients include Gusto, Jobber, Mindbody and DoorDash, per Stripe's announcement.

Stripe news, 2025 to 2026

• September 29, 2025: Stripe announced it powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and released the Agentic Commerce Protocol, codeveloped with OpenAI (Stripe).
• October 9, 2025: Stripe opened a new Dublin headquarters at One Wilton Park, which it says triples its previous office space there to 14,500 square meters (Stripe).
• December 11, 2025: Stripe launched its Agentic Commerce Suite, aimed at sales made through AI agents (Stripe).
• January 14, 2026: Stripe completed its acquisition of Metronome (Stripe).
• February 24, 2026: Stripe published its 2025 annual letter: $1.9 trillion in total volume, stablecoin payments volume roughly doubled to around $400 billion, and a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation (Stripe).
• April 29, 2026: At its Sessions conference, Stripe announced 288 products and features and said Link has more than 250 million users (Stripe).
• June 22, 2026: Eileen O'Mara became vice chair and Tyler Bryson chief revenue officer (Stripe).
• August 19, 2026: Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter (Stripe).
• August 28, 2026: Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people, that Stripe and the buyout firm Advent had dropped their pursuit of PayPal after offering more than $50 billion. Advent, PayPal and Stripe declined to comment (Irish Times).
• September 30, 2026: Stripe agreed to acquire Parafin (Stripe).