According to the Financial Times (paywall), the online payment processing firm Stripe now has a valuation of $95 billion, making it the most valuable firm in Silicon Valley. It comes after the company"s latest financing round which saw it raise $600 million in new equity from organisations including Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency, Allianz, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, AXA, and Sequoia Capital.
The 11-year-old company has done well in the pandemic as more businesses have gone online and sought out a payments processor for their online orders. John Collison, one of the founders of Stripe, said that it’s now handling 5,000 requests every second including payments, refunds, and customer data checks.
With the firm being a private company, it doesn’t share its financial information like those which are publicly traded. According to a source for FT, which is close to the company, it handles more payments than Adyen, a European rival that processed €303.6 billion last year. What we do know is that it’s used by several popular companies including Zoom, Salesforce, Atlassian, Shopify, Instacart, Deliveroo, Uber, and Instagram.
With this latest funding, Stripe will hire an additional 1,000 staff members at its Dublin office by 2026 and it will use the money to support its planned launches in new emerging markets including Brazil, India, and Indonesia later in the year. Each of those countries has significant populations that it can tap into and ultimately raise its valuation further if it’s successful.