Not needing anyone’s money gives you a certain kind of confidence. Stripe’s name keeps coming up in discussions at Davos this year—not as a business pursuing investors, but as one that investors are pursuing. In January, John Collison, seated across from Emily Chang of Bloomberg, stated unequivocally that there was no rush. Not next year, not ever, at least not according to a schedule that someone else has established.
The adage “no rush” has more significance than it may seem. In 2010, Stripe was established. For a private company, especially one worth more than $100 billion, sixteen years is an eternity by most Silicon Valley clocks. Airbnb went public. Uber went public. Stripe simply keeps cashing checks from secondary sales and ignoring the issue, while Coinbase, beset by regulatory issues, made its way to Nasdaq.
The most straightforward and dull explanation is that Stripe doesn’t require the funds. With a total payment volume exceeding $1.4 trillion and revenue projected to be close to $5.84 billion in 2025, it became profitable in 2024. Businesses go public for funding, liquidity, and occasionally prestige. Stripe has developed strategies to get around all three. Early employees can periodically cash out shares through tender offers. According to reports, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are offering advice on listing options; however, no date has been set, and it appears that none will be until the Collison brothers feel pressured to do so.
The founders have made this philosophical argument multiple times. They contend that public companies are designed for what they refer to as the “extract stage”—squeezing efficiency, meeting quarterly earnings goals, and reporting to analysts every ninety days. Private businesses, on the other hand, are allowed to continue growing. It’s difficult to ignore how this framing conveniently fits a business that, according to its own 2025 disclosures, is still actively developing and reinvesting a larger portion of its earnings in R&D than comparable peers.
Observing Stripe’s product proliferation over the last two years, the expansion argument is more convincing than detractors anticipated. What began as a checkout button for developers has grown into a vast financial operating system that includes lending, business incorporation, tax automation, and fraud prevention. After moving to Stripe, Hertz reportedly saw a four percent increase in authorization rates. Forbes reported a 23 percent increase in revenue from using it to manage subscriptions. Although these aren’t particularly noteworthy figures, they are the kind of small victories that add up over time.
However, there are risks associated with remaining anonymous indefinitely. Tender offers provide employees with short-term liquidity, but they are a band-aid solution rather than a framework. Beneath all the assurance, there’s a more difficult question: what would happen if the AI and stablecoin bets Before it ever lists, Stripe is cooling off. Klarna also dabbled in stablecoins. Half of the payments sector did the same. These kinds of trends don’t always hold up over time, and a business that waits too long to test public markets runs the risk of realizing its valuation was always a private-market fiction.
Although they won’t say it out loud, Stripe’s leadership appears to be aware of this. For a business that has never needed to raise money from the public in the first place, a direct listing has been suggested as the more likely option than a traditional IPO. To be honest, nobody knows if that will occur in 2027 or if it will take longer than ten years. For the time being, Stripe appears to be satisfied with demonstrating that private businesses can create their own regulations when they are large enough, and that Wall Street is, for once, the one who is waiting by the phone.
