- Stripe, the company known for building one of the largest economic infrastructures for the internet, announced that it raised an additional $600 million as an extension of its Series G round
Stripe, the company known for building one of the largest economic infrastructures for the internet, announced that it raised an additional $600 million as an extension of its Series G round. The funding came from Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Sequoia.
This round of funding is based on the same terms and valuation as the Series G ($36 billion post-money). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks. And the current disruption underscores the need for a reliable and easy-to-use infrastructure for internet businesses. As a result, the rate of new businesses going live on Stripe has accelerated since the start of the year.
For example, Stripe added companies like Caviar, Coupa, Just Eat, Keap, Lightspeed, Mattel, NBC, and Paid as customers. And Stripe also just added Zoom to the list of companies using the service for modernizing its payments stack and grow internationally.
Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the Internet by providing an “on-ramp to the digital economy for business around the world.”
Stripe — which has over $2 billion on its balance sheet — is now in a position to both provide uninterrupted service to its users in a time of stress and invest in long-term improvements.
In order to help communities and customers navigate the pandemic, the company has fast-tracked support for telemedicine providers in the US. And Stripe also simplified the steps involved in launching a business on its platform, which enabled individual farmers (with no experience running an Internet business) to sell fresh produce online. Soon Stripe will have facilitated $1 billion for businesses that launched on Stripe in the US since the onset of the coronavirus.
With the funding, Stripe is planning to invest further in growing its platform, including hiring talent around the world, deepening its stack of software functionality to simplify online business, and accelerating its geographic expansion (with upcoming launches in Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, and Romania). Plus the company will pursue strategic initiatives or acquisitions.
“People who never dreamt of using the internet to see the doctor or buy groceries are now doing so out of necessity. And businesses that deferred moving online or had no reason to operate online have made the leap practically overnight,” said Stripe co-founder and president John Collison. “We believe now is not the time to pull back, but to invest even more heavily in Stripe’s platform.”
