Stripe and Advent make reported $53B-plus offer for PayPal

Stripe is reportedly trying to buy PayPal with help from private equity firm Advent International, a move that would put one of fintech’s most valuable private companies in direct control of a major publicly traded payments brand. For retail investors, PayPal is the market-facing part of the story: a takeover offer can change how investors value a stock, although Reuters’ report does not mean a transaction is complete.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Stripe and Advent submitted an offer for PayPal valued at more than $53 billion. PayPal has been the subject of deal speculation for months, according to Crunchbase News.

The size of the reported proposal stands out. Privately held startups usually do not buy large public companies because they often lack three common deal currencies: large cash balances, publicly traded shares they can issue to sellers, and enough borrowing capacity to fund a takeover. Stripe is an exception because it has raised substantial private capital and carries one of the highest private-market valuations in tech.

Stripe said in February that it had arranged investor deals to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation, according to Crunchbase News. A tender offer is a transaction in which investors offer to buy shares from existing holders, giving employees or early backers a way to sell without an initial public offering. Crunchbase News said that valuation made Stripe the world’s fourth most valuable startup, behind AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI.

Stripe has raised about $10.4 billion since it was founded in 2010, according to Crunchbase data. That capital base has helped make the company one of the more acquisitive venture-backed startups.

Stripe’s dealmaking has sped up

Crunchbase data shows Stripe has made 21 known acquisitions since its founding. Thirteen of those deals have been announced since 2020, showing a faster pace of mergers and acquisitions, or M&A, in the past several years.

Only three of Stripe’s acquisitions have disclosed purchase prices, according to Crunchbase data. Stripe bought stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2025, usage-based billing software company Metronome for $1 billion in 2026, and Nigerian payments startup Paystack for $200 million in 2020.

Recent Stripe purchases point to two areas of focus, according to Crunchbase News. One is stablecoins and crypto infrastructure, including Bridge, Privy, Valora and PartyDAO. A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to track the value of another asset, often the U.S. dollar. The other is billing and money movement, including Metronome, Lemon Squeezy and Orum.

A PayPal deal would be in a different category

A PayPal acquisition above $53 billion would be far larger than any known Stripe deal to date. Crunchbase News said it would rank among the largest acquisitions of a U.S. technology company, public or private, over the past five years.

According to Crunchbase data cited by Crunchbase News, only a small number of recent U.S. tech deals were larger, including a $61 billion VMware-Broadcom transaction in 2022 and SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition last month of AI coding platform Cursor and its parent company, Anysphere.

If completed, the deal would make Stripe a more powerful player in payments, a crowded field that includes card processing, online checkout, billing software, money movement and newer crypto payment tools. For now, the key fact is narrower: Reuters says an offer has been made, while no completed acquisition has been reported.

This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.