Stripe

Stripe

Stripe was founded in 2010 by Irish entrepreneurs Patrick and John Collison, who had previously sold an e-commerce tool called Auctomatic for $5 million while still in their teens. The company began as seven lines of code that let developers accept payments on a website without a merchant account or bank negotiations. By 2025 it supports 135 currencies and payment methods across an undisclosed number of countries, serving 50% of the Fortune 100. Stripe's model spans online and in-person payments, billing and subscription management, card issuing, treasury services, and stablecoin infrastructure. Its strategic investment practice takes minority stakes in companies building on Stripe's financial stack—confirmed portfolio relationships include ElevenLabs, a $3 billion AI audio company, and Supabase, which delivers its backend-as-a-service to 150 countries using Stripe's infrastructure. The firm also operates Stripe Atlas, an incorporation and banking service that embeds Stripe as the default financial layer for newly formed startups globally. As a private company, Stripe does not disclose assets under management, headcount, or the size of its strategic investment book. Its website reports $1.9 trillion in total payments volume processed in 2025. In 2025, the firm introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol, enabling any business to accept purchases from AI platforms without major technical changes—extending its infrastructure thesis to autonomous economic agents. Stripe's structural position is a two-sided network moat: it simultaneously serves as the payment rails for millions of internet businesses and as a capital provider to the most promising ventures on those rails. This architecture gives its investment team proprietary visibility into revenue growth, churn, and geographic expansion before any outside investor sees the numbers, functioning as a real-time data advantage embedded in normal business operations.