San Francisco Startup, Stripe, Hits $35 Billion Valuation

With a fresh $250 million funding round announced on Thursday, payment processing company Stripe has reached an astounding $35 billion valuation.

According to Stripe, the extra funding derived from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst will be used for accelerating international expansion, growing its product suite and extending enterprise capabilities.

Stripe has overtaken SpaceX's $33.5 billion valuation, and it sits among the highly valued tech startups in the world. It also toppled its rival, Square, by $10 billion after securing the financing on Thursday. Its founders, Irish entrepreneurs John and Patrick Collison are now estimated to be worth $4.2 billion each. The decacorn company was only worth 0.29% of its current valuation in 2012 at $100 million. A decacorn is a term for a startup company valued at $10 billion.

Stripe already has a "programmable infrastructure for global money movement, the Global Payments and Treasury Network (GPTN), and a growing roster of products and services atop that foundation, including Connect, Billing, Terminal, and Radar."

There is also a growing list of companies that Stripe processes payments for with some well-known brands like Under Armour, Target, Booking.com. Shopify, and Grab. They have also expanded to eight new countries which bring the total to 40 countries served by Stripe.

Earlier in September, the company launched Stripe Capital which gives companies easy access to funds to help grow their business. It advances cash to Stripe customers and repayment is through the future sales made on the payment platform. Stripe also announced a corporate card.

However, unlike their tech peers that have and are planning to launch their IPOs, CNBC reported that John Collison has no plans of going public yet and that they are comfortable with their status as a private company.

Some of the highly anticipated IPOs this year, such as Uber and Lyft, have traded lower than their initial price range. Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications are one of those few tech companies that performed better than their initial public offer. WeWork is another startup with a $47 billion valuation but is currently struggling to sell its IPO.