Stripe: 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50

Founders: Patrick Collison (CEO) and John Collison
Release: 2011
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $8.7 billion (Pitchbook)
Rating: $91.5 billion
Key technologies: Artificial intelligence, machine learning
Industry: Fintech
Disruptor 50 Previous Appearances 50 List: 10 (No. 3, 2024)

Since its founding in 2010, Stripe has grown from a few lines of code to the world’s largest personally important fintech.

Currently 10 Disruptor 50 Company started as a developer-first solution for online credit card payments. The online checkout process was well known at the time, and the brothers Patrick and John Collison tried to simplify it.

Today, Stripe is a global powerhouse serving millions of businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, offering more than the original credit card processing tool. It provides backend footing for billing, fraud prevention, business startup help, and in-person payment options. This is part of a set of tools aimed at increasing profitability for your business from fellow Disruptor Openai, from Amazon, Google, Shopify, Marriott, Apple, Walmart and Target.

Part of Stripe’s focus over the past year has been offering an artificial intelligence boom. At the 2024 Stripe Sessions Conference, the company announced over 50 new features, including AI-powered checkout and fraud prevention.

“We ensure that stripes are suitable to serve the next chapter of the economy,” the Crucion Brothers wrote in their 2024 annual letter, highlighting how rapidly growing technology will change the foundations of online commerce. “The numbers are expected to be effectively ingrained in 2025 totals for more than 700 AI agent startups launched on Stripe last year,” they said.

In February, Stripe took a major step into the world of Cryptocurrency, acquiring Bridge Network, a Stablecoin platform, for $1.1 billion. The biggest acquisition to date is part of the “big bet on Stable Coin” and part of a larger plan to integrate stubcoin into traditional finance.

“Given Stripe and what we’ve focused on for the past seven years, that is, I’ve personally focused on it, it’s breaking down the barriers to global commercial,” Neetika Bansal, head of Stripe’s Money Movement Products, told CNBC in an interview at the time of the transaction. “We did that mostly on traditional financial railroads.”

Stripe processes millions of cross-border transactions every day, and Bansal said CNBC Stablecoins can reduce costs and make transactions easier.

Despite years of speculation about the IPO, President and CEO Collison Brothers stresses that publishing is not a priority. Stripe was a hit from one of the most headed days during the startup boom, but was able to raise funds at a $91.5 billion valuation in early 2025.

Cost management continues to be focused. Earlier this year, the fintech company cut 300 jobs in product, engineering and operations, which is about 3.5% of its employees. However, the company said it is “hoping to increase its staff to 10,000 by the end of the year, and “is not slowing down employment.”