Stripe jumps to $159bn valuation in employee share sale
Tender offers replace IPOs as private-market liquidity, Price discovery happens in a closed room
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Stripe said its latest employee share sale values the payments company at $159 billion, up from $91.5 billion a year ago. The transaction is a tender offer—investors buy existing shares from employees and early holders—rather than an IPO or a primary fundraising round, according to TechCrunch. Thrive Capital, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz and Stripe itself participated.
The number matters less than the mechanism. A tender offer gives employees liquidity without subjecting the company to the discipline of public markets: no quarterly guidance, no analyst coverage, no daily price discovery, and fewer disclosure obligations. Price is set in a negotiated deal among insiders and a small circle of late-stage buyers, with the company often managing supply by limiting how much stock can be sold. That creates a valuation that looks like a market signal but behaves more like an HR policy—an annual event that retains staff, refreshes morale, and resets the internal scorecard.
It also shows how “private markets” have become a parallel stock exchange for large venture-backed firms that can postpone listing indefinitely. When IPO windows close, these secondary deals become the release valve: employees can pay taxes, buy houses, or diversify without forcing the company into public scrutiny. Investors, meanwhile, get exposure to a mature business while avoiding the volatility—and the accountability—that comes with a ticker symbol.
Stripe’s own messaging highlights why buyers are willing to pay up. The company says stablecoin payment volume on its platform doubled to about $400 billion in 2025, with roughly 60% coming from B2B payments. It has been building crypto plumbing for years, acquiring wallet service Privy and launching a payments-focused blockchain called Tempo, TechCrunch reports. Those claims may be directionally informative, but they are not audited public filings; in a tender offer, they function more as a pitch deck than as a prospectus.
The result is a valuation that can rise sharply without a corresponding external test of revenue quality, margins, or cyclicality. In a public listing, a $67.5 billion jump in implied value would be interrogated by short sellers, competitors, and regulators; in a tender offer, the same jump is mostly a matter of who gets allocation and at what price.
Stripe’s $159 billion valuation arrives as an annual ritual tied to the Collison brothers’ founder letter. The company is still private, but its employees now have a price tag to point to—and a limited window to cash out.