Stripe avoids the public markets
Stripe avoids the public markets by using tender offers to provide liquidity to employees. The February 2026 tender offer set the valuation at $159 billion, which is a 74% increase from the $91.5 billion valuation seen in 2025. Thrive Capital, Coatue, and a16z participated in this secondary sale. Stripe also used its own capital to repurchase shares. This strategy provides a pressure valve for a company that has stayed private longer than most of its peers. The company’s valuation has fluctuated in the past, including a drop to $50 billion during a 2023 funding round after hitting $95 billion in 2021. John Collison, the co-founder and president, told Bloomberg in January 2026 that going public is not one of the company’s top priorities. The firm reached full-year profitability in 2024. I find this pattern of managing valuations through controlled secondaries a clear indication that the company prioritizes stability over the regulatory burdens of an IPO.
The scale of payments and revenue
The scale of Stripe’s operations provides a massive foundation for its growth. Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, which accounts for 1.6% of global GDP. This volume increased 34% from the $1.4 trillion processed during 2024. Revenue reached $6.8 billion in 2025, which is a 33% increase from the $5.1 billion reported in 2024, and the company converted 47% of that revenue into $3.2 billion of free cash flow. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Stripe generated $2 billion in revenue.
| Metric | Stripe (2025) | Adyen (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Payment Volume | $1.9 trillion | €1.39 trillion |
| Net Revenue | $6.8 billion | €2.36 billion |
| Take Rate | 0.36% | 0.17% |
| Free Cash Flow | $3.2 billion | €1.08 billion |
The competition with Adyen remains intense. Adyen processed €1.39 trillion in 2025, which is roughly 86% of the volume Stripe handled. Stripe earns more than twice the revenue per dollar processed compared to Adyen, with a take rate of 0.36% against Adyen’s 0.17%. Adyen targets large enterprises with interchange-plus pricing, but Stripe captures smaller and faster-growing businesses using a flat 2.9% plus 30 cents rate for US online cards. I would advise you to look at your own transaction costs before considering a move. Most third-party analyses suggest that the crossover point where Adyen’s model becomes more cost-effective than Stripe’s flat rate falls between $750,000 and $1.2 million in monthly card volume. Adyen maintains an EBITDA margin of 53% and reported net revenue of €2.36 billion for the year.
Expansion into software and AI
Stripe expands its revenue by selling software tools that attach to its core payments business. The Revenue suite, which includes Billing, Invoicing, and Tax, approaches a $1 billion annual run rate in 2026. The company spent $1 billion to acquire Metronome, a provider of usage-based billing infrastructure for companies like OpenAI and NVIDIA. The company’s massive scale allows it to capture significant revenue from the artificial intelligence explosion by providing the necessary infrastructure for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to manage highly complex, usage-based payments at a massive scale. Stripe also placed a $53 billion bid for PayPal to acquire consumer brands like Venmo and access to hundreds of millions of accounts. The company also acquired the stablecoin orchestration platform Bridge to embed crypto infrastructure into its stack. Stripe supports many AI startups, including Cursor, which reached $100 million in ARR in just three years, and Lovable, which reached $17 million ARR in three months. Stripe also supports more than 300,000 companies through its Billing product. Will the company eventually seek the consumer relationship through an acquisition or through its own Link network?
