Fintech giant Stripe revealed in its annual letter published Wednesday that it surpassed $1 trillion in total payment volume in 2023, up 25% from 2022.
The milestone, which comes 15 years after the company was founded, offers a glimpse into the financials of one of the world’s largest private companies and how fast it’s growing. By comparison, PayPal surpassed $1 trillion in total payment volume in 2021, 23 years after it was founded.
Co-founders and brothers Patrick and John Collison attributed the growth to Stripe’s enterprise business, fast-growing startups adopting its products, and billing and tax services.
“We spent a lot of time focusing on that top-line growth,” Stripe president John Collison said in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin on “Squawk Box” that aired Wednesday.
“We spent all of last year with people predicting all manner of doom and gloom,” he said, adding that “so far, consumer spending has held up real well.”
Stripe is valued at $65 billion as of the company’s latest tender offer completed last month. That’s an increase from its last valuation of $50 billion, but still far from its high of $95 billion in 2021.
“Startups don’t do themselves any favors by denying that a new economic reality exists,” Collison told Sorkin. “We have always been very shareholder-oriented. We wanted to ensure shareholders have access to liquidity; that is why we did the tender offer last year, that’s why we did the tender offer this year.”
The company’s annual letter also included an interesting statistic about startups.
Despite the frosty conditions for startup fundraising last year — which dropped to a six-year low, according to PitchBook — the Collison brothers say Stripe’s data indicates startups founded in 2022 are generating revenue at a faster pace than those founded in 2019. In particular, artificial intelligence companies are outperforming other sectors.
“Things got a bit mad at the peak of 2021 … startups are focusing on more profitable growth,” Collison told Sorkin on “Squawk Box.” “Because inference costs are so high for AI products you actually tend to see paid products from these startups much earlier than you would see from other companies.”