SAN FRANCISCO — Stripe, the San Francisco payments provider and one of the world’s most valuable private startups, hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase this week to advise it on a possible public listing in the coming year, two people with knowledge of the business. saying.
If the listing goes ahead, Stripe’s public debut would be among the largest and most anticipated in its startup class, potentially reopening moribund public markets to new offerings.
Stripe told employees Thursday that it was considering multiple routes to allow its shareholders to withdraw cash within the next 12 months, the people said. Possible routes include a direct listing, in which the company would publicly list its shares but not issue new ones; a takeover bid, in which you would sell employee shares to outside investors but not go public; or a regular initial public offering, the people said.
Information previously reported about Stripe’s plans.
Investors valued Stripe, founded in 2010 by brothers John and Patrick Collison, at $95 billion in 2021. Last year, amid turmoil in the tech startup market, the company cut its internal valuation by 28% to $74 billion and laid off 14 percent of the staff, or just over 1,000 people.
The company, which sells payment processing software to the likes of Peloton, Wayfair and Amazon, has put off exploring public marketplaces. But its early investors, who enjoy huge profits, and employees, some of whose shares will soon expire, are eager to cash in on the company’s success.
Stripe has raised more than $2 billion from investors including Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
Market watchers often view Stripe’s performance as an indicator of the overall health of the startup market, as it began by serving other startups before expanding to larger clients.
Like many tech companies, Stripe has spent the past year backing out of its overly optimistic growth plans in the face of a faltering economy. “We were overly optimistic about the near-term growth of the Internet economy,” Patrick Collison wrote in a message to employees announcing layoffs in November.
