Stripe in brief – numbers that speak for themselves
Stripe was founded in 2010 by the Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, then 22 and 20 years old. Fifteen years later the company has grown into one of the most central infrastructure players on the internet. Here are the numbers that define Stripe today:
The company processed $1.4 trillion in payments during 2024, up 38 percent year on year. That is equivalent to 1.3 percent of the world's GDP. Gross revenue was estimated at $19.4 billion in 2025, and net revenue (after transaction costs to partners such as Visa and the banks) at roughly $5.1 billion. Stripe is profitable and expects to remain so.
Half of the 100 largest listed companies in the US use Stripe. 80 percent of the Forbes Cloud 100 list and 78 percent of the Forbes AI 50 list are built on Stripe's infrastructure. More than 100 of Stripe's customers each process over a billion dollars annually through the platform.
More than payments – a financial operating system
What makes Stripe particularly interesting from an investment perspective is that the company has expanded far beyond its original payment solution. Stripe has methodically built a complete financial operating system for the internet:
Stripe Billing handles subscription payments for over 300,000 companies with close to 200 million active subscriptions. The Revenue and Finance Automation suite passed $500 million in recurring revenue in February 2025 – a revenue stream considerably higher-margin than pure transaction processing.
Stripe Capital offers lending to small and medium-sized businesses directly via the Stripe dashboard. Companies that borrow through Stripe Capital had 114 percent higher revenue growth compared with the control group.
Stripe Atlas helps founders around the world incorporate companies in the US – a smart customer-acquisition strategy that captures companies before they even have their first customer.
Stripe Terminal for physical payments, and now also crypto payments via the acquisition of Bridge and the launch of the Open Issuance platform for stablecoins.
The strategy is clear: each new layer in the ecosystem increases customer loyalty and creates new, higher-margin revenue streams. The more Stripe products a company uses, the harder (and more expensive) it becomes to switch providers.
Stripe's role in the AI economy
An underrated dimension of Stripe is the company's central role in the AI boom. 78 percent of the companies on the Forbes AI 50 list – including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Mistral – are built on Stripe's payment infrastructure. During 2024, more than 700 AI-focused companies were added as customers.
Stripe's own data shows that AI companies are building businesses at record speed. Cursor reached $100 million in recurring revenue in three years. Lovable reached $17 million in three months. Bolt reached $20 million in two months – all via Stripe.
Stripe is now also positioning itself for the era of AI agents. The company has launched an Agentic Commerce Protocol in collaboration with OpenAI, which allows AI agents to make purchases directly – for example letting ChatGPT users buy products from Shopify and Etsy without leaving the conversation. It is an infrastructure position that could become enormously valuable if AI agents become a dominant way to shop online.
Valuation trajectory and IPO outlook
Stripe's valuation has been a roller coaster. From a peak valuation of $95 billion in 2021 it fell to $50 billion in 2023, before rising to $91.5 billion in February 2025 and $107 billion in September 2025. The current secondary-market valuation was estimated at $129 billion in December 2025.
Stripe has consistently avoided giving a timeline for an IPO. But the repeated secondary transactions, the acquisition activity (17 acquisitions, most recently Metronome in January 2026) and the strengthened profitability suggest the company is building a foundation that is ready for the public market.
At a valuation of $107 billion, Stripe trades at roughly 18 times its 2024 net revenue. That is a premium relative to listed competitors such as Adyen, but justified by Stripe's broader ecosystem, faster growth and dominant market position.
Risks to consider
Competition: PayPal still dominates in consumer volume, Adyen is growing among large enterprises and Checkout.com is taking market share in the mid-segment. Stripe has lost market share measured by number of websites – from 21 percent to 17 percent – but is growing in absolute volume and revenue.
Margin pressure: payment processing is a volume-driven business with thin margins. Stripe's strategy of building high-margin products (Billing, Atlas, Capital) on top of the core is crucial for long-term profitability.
Regulatory risk: Stripe operates in a heavily regulated industry. New rules around payments, crypto activities or data protection could affect operations.
How to invest in US private companies via Accumeo
Investments in large US private companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Stripe must in practice be made through so-called SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles). These are separate companies that pool capital from several investors in order to make a single investment in a private company. In the event of an IPO, the SPV's holding is converted into listed shares in accordance with the listing terms.
Just like other early investors, SPVs are generally subject to a lock-up period, often around 180 days. During this period the shares cannot be sold. The exposure, however, remains unchanged. After the lock-up, the manager may choose to sell shares and distribute the proceeds to investors, or distribute shares directly to investors (an in-kind distribution), if the structure allows it. The method is determined by the SPV agreement and the manager's strategy.
There is no way for an individual private person to buy directly onto these companies' cap tables – the SPV structure is the established standard in the US private market.
Not all SPVs are alike, however. In the industry it is common to see fee models that include both a management fee and performance-based compensation (carried interest), often on the order of 2 percent in annual fees and 20 percent of profits – a structure known as "2/20". Some players also stack fees across multiple layers, which can erode returns considerably.
Accumeo sets up and administers its own SPVs for each investment. We are the only platform in Sweden that offers a 0/0 structure: no management fee and no carried interest. You pay only a fee of 5–10% at the time of investment – we take no share of your profit. That means your entire upside accrues to you as the investor.
We structure investments in accordance with applicable regulations, and you get full clarity on what you own, how the structure works and which terms apply.
If you have questions about how it works, you are very welcome to contact us. If you would like to see which investment opportunities are available right now, you can create an account and explore our platform.
