- Online payments company Stripe will undertake a tender offer for employees that will allow them to sell their shares in the company. Stripe is one of the largest privately held companies in Silicon Valley.
Payments giant Stripe will offer employees the chance to cash out some of their equity at a $91.5 billion valuation.
“We very much care about providing good liquidity for employees and existing shareholders,” Stripe cofounder and president John Collison told CNBC.
Stripe will undergo what is called a “tender offer,” which is a financial maneuver that gives investors and employees the chance to sell their equity in a private company. This specific tender offer from Stripe will only be available to current and former employees, a company spokesperson told Fortune. Over its history Stripe has undertaken several previous tender offers. Employees and investors usually welcome the opportunity to do so because it allows them the chance to gain some liquidity from their stake in the company, should they choose to.
Stripe’s existing investors include some of Silicon Valley’s premier VC firms such as Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz. The company said it also plans to repurchase shares.
When reached for comment, a Stripe spokesperson directed Fortune to an online statement announcing the tender offer.
Stripe’s upcoming tender offer comes as the company releases its annual letter summarizing its 2024 performance. In the letter, Stripe detailed a year of exceptional growth, as its total payment volume grew 38% to $1.4 trillion. Stripe also said it was profitable in 2024 and that it expected to continue being so for the foreseeable future.
“Expect Stripe to be profitable on an ongoing basis,” Collison told CNBC.
Originally founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, Stripe made a name for itself as a leader in the then-emerging space of digital payments. Much of its success was built on its ability to appeal to customers both large and small. Over the years, the Collison brothers have resisted any entreaties to take the company public. Instead, they’ve become one of the most valuable private tech companies in the U.S. alongside the likes of OpenAI, SpaceX, and Databricks.
Collison said he doesn’t anticipate Stripe will go public anytime soon. He added that the nature of the payments industry meant that growth was "lumpy" and not always linear, as shareholders in a public company might want it to be.
“You cannot manage the Stripe business on a supertight quarterly EPS [earnings per share] basis, because this growth tends to come in waves,” he said.
Over the years, the company’s valuation has fluctuated wildly as a result of both its business prospects and the broader swings of the tech industry. In 2021, Stripe hit its peak valuation of $95 billion during a $600 million funding round. At the time, Stripe’s sales soared because of the rise in online shopping during the pandemic. About two years later, its valuation was almost cut in half to $50 billion during another funding round, this time raising $6.5 billion. That mega funding round was one of the largest private stock sales in the U.S. at the time.
