Payments infrastructure giant Stripe said today it has inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $65 billion valuation.
Notably, the valuation represents a 30% increase compared to what Stripe was valued at last March when it raised $6.5 billion in Series I funding at a $50 billion valuation. But it is also still lower than the $95 billion valuation achieved in March of 2021.
While Stripe declined to comment beyond a written statement, a source familiar with the internal happenings in the company told TechCrunch that Stripe and some of its investors agreed to purchase over $1 billion of current and former Stripe employees’ shares.
The company, which counts the likes of Alaska Airlines, Best Buy, Lotus Cars, Microsoft, Uber and Zara as customers, had noted at the time of its last raise that the proceeds would go to “provide liquidity to current and former employees and address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards.” That, it added, would result in the retirement of Stripe shares that would offset the issuance of new shares to Series I investors.
A Stripe IPO has been long anticipated and was widely expected to happen in 2024. But with this deal, it appears that an initial public offering may not take place until next year.
In January, TC’s Rebecca Szkutak reported that — in anticipation of that IPO and according to secondary data tracker Caplight — there had been “an absolute flurry of buyers looking to get shares in the company in recent months.” On January 2, a secondary sale closed that valued Stripe shares at $21.06 apiece and valued the startup at $53.65 billion, according to Caplight data.
While Stripe did not name the investors participating in the latest deal, Sequoia Capital Managing Partner Roelof Botha was quoted in Stripe’s announcement and The Wall Street Journal cited Goldman Sachs’s growth equity fund as another backer.
The WSJ also reported that the transaction “is part of a commitment by the Collison brothers to provide liquidity annually to longtime and former employees.” Sources familiar with internal happenings at the company said that commitment is more to provide liquidity “regularly,” and not necessarily annually.
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