Stripe secures employee liquidity at $159bn valuation as internet economy spending accelerates.
Stripe, the payments giant founded and led by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, has agreed a tender offer with investors that values the company at $159 billion (€135 billion).
The company said the move provides liquidity to current and former employees while underscoring renewed confidence in the online payments group’s growth trajectory.
“Our programmable financial services now power more than 5 million businesses”
The tender offer is being funded primarily by investors including Thrive Capital, Coatue and Andreessen Horowitz, with Stripe also repurchasing a portion of shares using its own capital. The move accompanies the publication of Stripe’s 2025 annual letter, which describes a year of rapid expansion across both payments and its broader financial services platform.
Businesses using Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in total volume in 2025, an increase of 34% on the previous year and equal to roughly 1.6% of global GDP. The company said its Revenue suite, which includes Billing, Invoicing and Tax tools, is on track to reach a one billion dollar annual run rate.
In an investor letter, Patrick and John Collison wrote: “Our programmable financial services now power more than 5 million businesses directly or via platforms, including all of the top AI companies, many of the largest blue-chip companies (90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average), most of the biggest tech companies (80% of the Nasdaq 100), and a significant fraction of freshly minted startups (25% of all Delaware corporations are now created with Stripe Atlas).
“Stripe remained robustly profitable, allowing us to continue investing heavily in product development (with more than 350 product updates last year) as well as acquisitions.
“All in all, 2025 was a strong year for the internet economy, and we’re delighted to see so many of Stripe’s customers do so well.”
Kareem Zaki, partner at Thrive Capital, said the company had built the leading financial infrastructure stack for the internet economy. He added that Stripe’s position was strengthening as it expands into areas such as agentic commerce and stablecoin‑based payments.
Agentic e-commerce at internet speed
The group reported unusually strong performance among the companies that joined Stripe in 2025. More businesses signed up than in any previous year, with 57% based outside the United States. The 2025 cohort grew about 50% faster than the 2024 group, and the number of companies reaching 10 million dollars in annual recurring revenue within three months doubled. Startups created using Stripe Atlas also began monetising more quickly, with 20% charging customers within 30 days.
Stripe said internet businesses are increasingly global from day one. Many of the most recognisable AI products launched worldwide as default, including ChatGPT, Claude, Replit, Vercel, Cursor and Midjourney. Among Stripe users with mostly international revenue, around 30% of income came from markets that were neither their home country nor among the 10 largest global economies.
The company highlighted accelerating development in agentic commerce. It has been working with partners across AI labs, retailers and ecommerce platforms to create a common technical foundation for autonomous agents conducting commercial transactions. I
ts work with OpenAI includes the Agentic Commerce Protocol, designed to give AI systems and businesses a shared language for interactions. Stripe has also launched an Agentic Commerce Suite allowing brands to sell across multiple AI interfaces with one integration, and introduced shared payment tokens that allow agents to initiate payments without exposing credentials.
Stripe is collaborating with OpenAI on shopping inside ChatGPT and with Microsoft on extending similar capabilities to Copilot. Philippe Laffont, founder of Coatue Management, said Stripe was emerging as the default financial layer in the developing token‑based economy.
Stablecoin activity on the platform has grown quickly. Despite a steep fall in the price of bitcoin during 2025, stablecoin payments volume doubled to around 400 billion dollars, with about 60% believed to reflect business‑to‑business transactions. Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform acquired last year, saw its volume more than quadruple.
Stripe has deepened its presence in blockchain‑based payments through the acquisition of Privy, which supports more than 110 million programmable wallets, and the launch of Tempo, a blockchain designed specifically for payments. Tempo offers dedicated payment lanes, rapid settlement, optional privacy features and integration with compliance systems.
Alex Immerman, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said Stripe had aligned itself with successive waves of technological change from ecommerce to artificial intelligence. He added that its role as a financial infrastructure provider made it a natural platform for the next generation of ambitious companies.
Top image: John and Patrick Collison, founders of Stripe
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