Stripe Employees Shares Cash-Out: Valued at $65 Billion

Stripe has announced a tender offer valued at $65 billion, allowing present and former employees to cash out their shares.

In a tender offer valued at $65 billion, payments infrastructure behemoth Stripe announced today that it has signed agreements with investors to give liquidity to present and former employees.

Significantly, the valuation is 30% more than Stripe’s valuation in March of last year, when the company raised $6.5 billion in Series I capital at a valuation of $50 billion. Contrarily, the $95 billion valuation reached in March 2021 is still higher.

Although Stripe only provided a written statement in response to media inquiries, an insider informed them that the firm and some of it’s investors had agreed to buy more than $1 billion worth of shares from current and former employees.

When it last raised capital, the firm said that it would use the money to “provide liquidity to current and former employees and address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards.” The company’s clientele includes companies like Zara, Alaska Airlines, Best Buy, Lotus Cars, Microsoft, and Uber. It went on to say that this would cause Stripe shares to be retired, which would cancel out the new shares issued to Series I investors.

Many people were hoping that 2024 would be the year that Stripe went public. This agreement, however, makes it seem like an IPO could have to wait until next year.

Rebecca Szkutak of TC reported in January that, according to Caplight, a secondary data tracker, there had been “an absolute flurry of buyers looking to get shares in the company in recent months.” This was in preparation of the company’s IPO. According to Caplight statistics, a secondary sale of Stripe shares occurred on January 2 and valued the business at $53.65 billion, with each share priced at $21.06.

Even though Stripe didn’t reveal who was investing in their most recent acquisition, Managing Partner Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital was quoted in the release, and the Wall Street Journal mentioned a growth equity fund from Goldman Sachs as another supporter.

The deal “is part of a commitment by the Collison brothers to provide liquidity annually to longtime and former employees,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The pledge is to supply liquidity “regularly,” rather than annually, according to people aware with corporate activities.