Stripe, Silicon Valley's most valuable start-up, raises new capital at $36 billion valuation

Stripe has raised even more money to help it ride the wave of a global economy shifting online.

Silicon Valley’s most valuable start-up announced a new $600 million funding round that bumps its valuation to $36 billion, the company told CNBC. Axios first reported Stripe’s new valuation. Return investors in the round included Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Alphabet’s GV and Sequoia Capital.

The San Francisco-based payment company’s revenue is largely tied to growth in online shopping. Stripe highlighted the recent Covid-19 outbreak that is “pushing the economy online” and said “several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks.”

“People who never dreamt of using the internet to see the doctor or buy groceries are now doing so out of necessity. And businesses that deferred moving online or had no reason to operate online have made the leap practically overnight,” John Collison, co-founder and president of Stripe, said in a press release. “We believe now is not the time to pull back, but to invest even more heavily in Stripe’s platform.” 

The company announced the addition of Zoom Video Communications to its list of customers benefiting from the shift to an online economy. It also counts DoorDash, Instacart, Caviar and Postmates as clients.  

Thursday’s funding announcement is an extension of its Series G funding round that closed in September. That $250 million funding round brought the company’s valuation to $35 billion. The company, which was widely seen as a 2020 IPO candidate, is now more valuable than Palantir Technologies and Airbnb, according to Pitchbook. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and his brother, co-founder and president John Collison, have not commented publicly on the IPO timeline. 

Stripe said it now has more than $2 billion on its balance sheet, and will use the new capital to expand the payments platform globally and invest in hiring and software. 

Stripe makes software that allows businesses to accept payments over the internet. The start-up has benefited from growth in online payments, attracting investments from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Google’s venture arm Capital G, among others. It’s by far the most valuable private fintech company, with Robinhood trailing at a roughly $8 billion valuation.