There's a New Most Valuable Startup

Stripe's new round of funding has left SpaceX and Instacart in the dust. The payments processing company announced it had added $600 million on Sunday, for a valuation of $95 billion. That shoots Stripe past SpaceX, which is valued at $74 billion, and Instacart, which is pegged at $39 billion, CNN reports, making it the nation's most valuable startup. Demand for Stripe's services has grown during the pandemic along with the increase in online payments. The company said the new funding came from investors including Fidelity, Sequoia Capital, and Ireland's National Treasury Management Agency; Stripe was founded by two Irish brothers from Tipperary, per Yahoo. After starting the company as teenagers in 2010, John and Patrick Collisons reportedly were worth $3.2 billion apiece even before the latest funding.

Based in San Francisco and Dublin, the company said it plans to use the new money to expand in Europe—"particularly in Ireland," said John Collison. "The growth opportunity for the European digital economy is immense." The funding will create 1,000 jobs in Dublin, he said. Stripe's valuation has risen nearly threefold in less than a year, after being at $36 billion last April. One rival, Checkout.com, did the same in January; other competitors include PayPal and Square. The company, which has decided to concentrate on processing credit card, debit card and mobile wallet transactions—not cryptocurrencies—has not filed for an IPO or given any clues about its plans. "We are convinced that, despite making great progress over the last 10 years," the head of NTMA said, "most of Stripe’s success is yet to come." (More startup stories.)