Stripe, the payments firm founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison, has raised a new funding round of more than $6.5bn (€6.15bn) at a $50bn (€47bn) valuation.
The company says that the 'Series I' cash will be used to "provide liquidity to current and former employees and address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards".
This will result in the retirement of Stripe shares "that will offset the issuance of new shares to Series I investors".
Stripe does not need this capital to run its business, the company added.
The round reduces the valuation of the company by almost half since its last funding even in March 2021, when it was valued at $95bn.
Primary investors include existing Stripe shareholders – Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital – as well as new investors including GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.
“Over the last 12 years, current and former Stripes have helped build foundational economic infrastructure for millions of businesses around the world, and this transaction gives them the opportunity to access the value they’ve helped create,” said John Collison, cofounder and president of Stripe.
“But the internet economy is still young, and the opportunities of the next 12 years will dwarf those of the recent past. There’s so much to discover and to create. For us, it’s now back to work.”
While tech stocks have partially recovered from the slump of late 2022, valuations remain significantly below their peak of last summer.
Stripe has been one of the most-tipped tech IPOs for the last five years.
A funding round now almost certainly delays any IPO plans.
Last year, Stripe announced that it would lay off 14pc of its workforce, also impacting its Irish base. The company, founded in San Francisco in 2010, describes its Dublin office as its joint global headquarters.
Both Collison brothers are regularly cited as among Ireland’s richest citizens, with multi-billion personal fortunes associated with their stakes in Stripe.
Stripe is used by tens of thousands of companies to process payments online. Stripe’s business model is to take a small percentage of each payment. It also has additional services, from invoicing and billing to fraud management.
Earlier this year, it announced an expansion in its dealings with Amazon, becoming a strategic payments partner for the retail giant in the US, Europe, and Canada for services including Prime, Audible, Kindle and Amazon Pay.
