Stripe raises new capital, reaching $95 billion valuation ahead of highly anticipated market debut

Online payments technology provider Stripe announced Sunday that it has raised a new $600 million round of funding that values the company at $95 million — nearly triple its last reported valuation of $36 billion from April 2020, according to PitchBook data.

Stripe, which makes software that allows businesses to accept payments over the internet, intends to invest the new capital into its European operations, the company said in a release. Thirty-one of the 42 countries that Stripe operates in are located in Europe, and President and Co-Founder John Collison singled out Ireland — where the company is headquartered — as a particular area of focus.

Founded more than a decade ago, today Stripe is by far the most valuable private fintech company, with Robinhood trailing at a roughly $11.7 billion valuation after investors wrote the company a $3 billion check amid this year’s GameStop chaos.

Stripe has seen eye-popping growth during the pandemic as its revenue is largely tied to growth in online shopping. In its previous funding round last April, Stripe was early to highlight the Covid-19 outbreak as “pushing the economy online” and said “several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks.”

“We’re investing in the infrastructure that will power internet commerce in 2030 and beyond,” wrote chief financial officer Dhivya Suryadevara, who joined the company in August after moving out of her role as General Motors‘ CFO. “The pandemic taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieve — and paid for — online, but the internet still isn’t the engine for 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 ballooning growth and valuation, the company has stayed tight-lipped about the prospect of a Wall Street debut, as John Collison told CNBC last year that the company has “no plans” to go public right away. 

Primary investors in the new series H round include Allianz X, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). Previous investors include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alphabet‘s late-stage investing 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, which also led the start-up’s Series A, is the underlying payments rails for Fast’s checkout product.

Stripe is a six-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company and landed at the top spot on the list in 2020.