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The new funding was raised at a valuation of $50bn, which is almost half of what Stripe was valued at during its 2021 peak.
Stripe has raised more than $6.5bn in a new fundraise to provide liquidity for its current and former employees.
The primary investors in the Series I fundraise include existing shareholders Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners and Thrive Capital. New investors included GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.
But the new funding was raised with a valuation of $50bn, almost half of what the company was valued at in 2021.
In March 2021, the Irish-founded payments company soared to $95bn in valuation after raising $600m, but lowered its internal valuation to $74bn last July amid a stock market downturn in the tech sector.
Stripe said the new funds will be used for current and former employees and to address “employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards”.
This will result in the retirement of Stripe shares which will offset the issuing of these new Series I investors.
Stripe president and co-founder John Collison said Stripe’s staff have helped build foundational economic infrastructure “for millions of businesses around the world” and that this deal will give them the “opportunity to access the value they’ve helped create”.
“But the internet economy is still young, and the opportunities of the next 12 years will dwarf those of the recent past,” Collison said. “There’s so much to discover and to create. For us, it’s now back to work.”
Last November, Stripe announced plans to cut 14pc of its workforce to prepare for “leaner times”, citing issues such as inflation, interest rates and rising energy costs. The reduction involved around 1,000 jobs being cut, bringing Stripe back to its February 2022 headcount of almost 7,000 employees globally.
Despite the downturn, Stripe’s latest release sounds optimistic about the future. The company claims that 100 businesses currently handle more than $1bn on Stripe’s services every year.
The company recently announced that it is enhancing its products and services with GPT-4, the latest large language model developed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
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