Patrick Collison, Stripe Chief Executive Who Built a Global Payments Platform

Patrick Collison is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Stripe, the financial infrastructure company with headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin. He has led the business since its founding in 2010 and sits on its board of directors.

His profile has grown with the volume that flows through Stripe. Businesses on the platform generated $1.9 trillion in total volume in 2025, which the company puts at roughly 1.6 percent of global GDP, and a February 2026 employee share sale valued Stripe at $159 billion.

Education

Collison first drew public attention through the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Ireland. In 2004 he entered an artificial intelligence project and finished as runner-up, and in 2005 he returned with Croma, a programming language of his own design, and took first place.

He later enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. According to The Irish Times, he was on a break from his studies there while building Stripe, and he did not return to complete a degree.

Career

Collison launched his first start-up in 2007, a software business that became known as Auctomatic. It went from incorporation to sale in about ten months.

In 2008 Auctomatic was sold to the Canadian firm Live Current Media for a reported $5 million. Looking back in a 2013 interview with The Irish Times, Collison called it a very small deal by technology standards and described the lesson he drew from it as a cautionary tale about acquisitions.

Stripe followed in 2010. Collison and co-founder John Collison set out to make it simpler for internet businesses to accept payments, building an online payments service that businesses could add to their own websites and apps.

The company was still operating quietly in March 2011 when TechCrunch reported that it had raised about $2 million from investors including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. Stripe began offering its service to businesses in the United States later that year.

Collison was Stripe’s first employee. By September 2013 the staff had reached 62 people, and he told The Irish Times at the time that the company was only at the start of its growth.

In February 2016 he announced Stripe Atlas on stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The service lets founders anywhere form a company in Delaware, open a United States bank account and start taking payments through Stripe, and it opened as an invite-only beta.

Atlas became one of the company’s best-known products. In its 2025 annual letter, Stripe said that 25 percent of all Delaware corporations had been created through Atlas.

Outside Stripe, Collison co-founded the Arc Institute in 2021, a nonprofit biomedical research organisation that works with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. TIME reported that it launched with an initial endowment of $650 million from Collison and other donors. In 2020 he also co-launched Fast Grants, a quick funding programme for scientists working on COVID-19 research.

Under his leadership Stripe has moved into new areas of money movement. In February 2025 it completed the purchase of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company, and in July 2025 it bought Privy, a wallet provider. In September 2025 Stripe unveiled Tempo, a blockchain built for payments that it incubated with the investment firm Paradigm.

Current Roles

• Co-founder and chief executive officer, Stripe
• Member of the board of directors, Stripe
• Co-founder, Arc Institute

Key Achievements

Building a global payments platform

Stripe now serves more than 5 million businesses, according to its 2025 annual letter. The company says its users include 90 percent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 80 percent of the Nasdaq 100.

• Total volume of $1.9 trillion in 2025, up 34 percent on 2024
• More than 135 currencies and payment methods supported
• Available to businesses in more than 50 countries

Reaching profitability

In its letter covering 2024, Stripe said it was profitable and expected to stay so in the coming years. That year total payment volume reached $1.4 trillion, a rise of 38 percent.

In the 2025 letter, Collison and his co-founder wrote that Stripe “remained robustly profitable, allowing us to continue investing heavily in product development”. The company reported more than 350 product updates during 2025.

Opening company formation to founders abroad

Atlas was designed for founders outside the United States who wanted a US company and access to American payment rails. Stripe said that 57 percent of the companies that joined its platform in 2025 were based outside the US.

The company also tracks how fast new firms get going. The share of Atlas start-ups charging their first customer within 30 days rose from 8 percent in 2020 to 20 percent in 2025, and the number of companies reaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue within three months of launch doubled from 2024.

Beyond its two head offices in San Francisco and Dublin, Stripe has offices in London, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo, among other cities.

A push into stablecoins and new payment rails

Stripe reported that stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion in 2025, with an estimated 60 percent of it business to business. Volume at Bridge more than quadrupled in the same year. The Kingdom has also been studying this area, as our report on how Saudi Arabia prepares to integrate stablecoins into its financial system explains.

• Bridge acquisition completed in February 2025
• Privy, which powers more than 110 million programmable wallets, acquired in July 2025
• Tempo blockchain unveiled in September 2025

The Company in Numbers

• Total volume processed by businesses on Stripe: $1.9 trillion (2025)
• Total payment volume: $1.4 trillion (2024)
• Businesses served: more than 5 million (2025)
• Valuation in employee tender offer: $159 billion (February 2026)
• Revenue suite (Billing, Invoicing, Tax) on track for a $1 billion annual run rate (2026)
• Staff: 62 people (September 2013)

Awards and Honours

• BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, first place (2005)
• Named to the TIME100 Philanthropy list (2025)

In Their Own Words

Speaking about Atlas at the Mobile World Congress in February 2016, Collison said, as reported by TechCrunch: “Startups in these markets can be up and running in a matter of days.”

In September 2013, when Stripe had 62 staff, he told The Irish Times: “We’re barely out of the starting blocks.”

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