Stripe extends Series G funding round
Stripe, which builds economic infrastructure for the internet, announced an extension of its Series G round, raising an additional $600 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, GV, and Sequoia. The financing takes place on the same terms and valuation as the Series G.
While the full economic impact of COVID-19 remains uncertain, several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks. The current disruption underscores the need for reliable, easy-to-use infrastructure for internet businesses. In this context, Stripe’s mission—to grow the GDP of the internet—means providing an on-ramp to the digital economy for businesses around the world. The rate of new businesses going live on Stripe has accelerated since the start of the year.
With more than $2 billion on its balance sheet, a capital-efficient business model, and a highly-diversified, growing, global user base, Stripe is in a position to both provide uninterrupted service to its users in a time of stress and invest in long-term improvements.
This foundation further enables Stripe’s continued in-roads with enterprise clients. Already in 2020, Stripe has welcomed such industry-leading firms as Caviar, Coupa, Just Eat, Keap, Lightspeed, Mattel, NBC, and Paid as customers. Today, Stripe is pleased to add Zoom to the list of companies using Stripe to modernize their payments stack and grow internationally.
Stripe is working to help its communities and customers navigate the current pandemic, including:
- Fast-tracking support for telemedicine providers in the US. Companies like Solv are now working with Stripe to provide physician-assisted forms of COVID-19 testing and same-day urgent care.
- Simplifying the steps involved in launching a business on Stripe. Even individual farmers, with no experience running an internet business, can quickly get started with Stripe to sell fresh produce online. Stripe will shortly have facilitated $1 billion in sales for businesses that launched on Stripe since the onset of the virus in the US.
- Helping established companies pivot to the internet. In Australia, Westfield is building a platform on Stripe to help retailers move online; in the US, ChowNow launched a restaurant loyalty product with Stripe; and France’s largest B2B farmers’ market, RungisChezVous, is now using Stripe to sell goods directly to consumers.
- Elastically scaling capacity for the businesses collectively using Stripe to process hundreds of billions of dollars each year, many of whom are seeing growth spikes. For users like Instacart, experiencing a 300% increase in customer demand year-over-year, it’s imperative that Stripe performs flawlessly.
- Providing fast access to funds through Instant Payouts, Stripe Capital, the Stripe Corporate Card, and helping small businesses access government aid.
As a critical infrastructure provider, Stripe plans to invest further in growing its platform, including: continuing to hire around the world; deepening its stack of software functionality to simplify online business; accelerating its geographic expansion (with upcoming launches in Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, and Romania); and pursuing strategic initiatives or acquisitions, no matter the climate.
“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 John Collison, President and Co-founder of Stripe. “We believe now is not the time to pull back, but to invest even more heavily in Stripe’s platform.”