Stripe’s Acquisition Pace Has Accelerated In The Past Five Years, But Nothing Comes Close To Its Reported $53B PayPal Bet

Payments giant Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have teamed up to make an offer to buy troubled PayPal in a deal valued at more than $53 billion, Reuters reported Wednesday. The purported deal, which has been rumored for months, is notable not just for its scale — it would be one of the largest acquisitions of a technology company in recent years — but also for its highly unusual nature. Privately held startups typically lack the cash, publicly traded shares and debt capacity to acquire their publicly listed brethren. Of course, Stripe is not just any privately held company. The fintech startup was, until just a few short years ago, the highest valued startup based in the U.S., before being eclipsed on that metric by AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI . In February, the company announced it had inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation , which still ranks it as the fourth most valuable startup in the world. With substantial private capital — it has raised some $10.4 billion since inception, per Crunchbase — Stripe has long been one of the most acquisitive venture-backed startups. It has made 21 known acquisitions since its 2010 inception, according to Crunchbase data. Only three have disclosed prices: stablecoin platform Bridge at $1.1 billion (2025), usage-based billing software startup Metronome at $1 billion (2026), and Nigerian payments startup Paystack at $200 million (2020). Stripe’s M&A pace has also accelerated sharply since 2020, Crunchbase data shows, with 13 of its 21 acquisitions announced since then. Its recent strategy appears to be focused on stablecoins and crypto infrastructure — Bridge, Privy , Valora and PartyDAO — as well as on billing and money movement through Metronome, payment processing startup Lemon Squeezy and Orum . If the plan to buy PayPal does go through, it will most certainly make Stripe an even more formidable player in the crowded payments space. It would also rank as one of the largest acquisitions of a U.S. tech company, public or private, of the past five years, according to Crunchbase data, trailing only a handful of larger deals including VMWare’s $61 billion purchase of Broadcom in 2022 and SpaceX ’s acquisition of AI coding platform Cursor and its parent, Anysphere , for $60 billion last month. Related Crunchbase queries: Stripe’s Acquisitions Most Acquisitive Startups Between 2021 And 2026 Related reading: Cursor Deal Puts US On Track For Record Startup M&A Year Illustration: Dom Guzman