# Stripe **Draft profile.** Payments infrastructure company founded in 2010 by Irish brothers [[Patrick Collison]] and [[John Collison]]. Stripe sits inside this KB as a **Thiel-orbit fintech** whose founders, capital stack, and alumni network connect it to nearly every major tech-oligarchy story tracked here — even though Stripe itself is a payments processor, not a defense or AI vendor. ## Founding - **2010** — Patrick (then 21) and John (then 19) Collison launched Stripe out of [[Y Combinator]]. Their pitch: developer-first payments APIs that would make accepting cards as easy as embedding a script. - **2011 seed** — Raised $2M from a group including **[[Peter Thiel]]** personally, **[[Elon Musk]]** personally, **[[Sequoia Capital]]**, **[[Andreessen Horowitz]]**, and SV Angel. This is the seed round that locks Stripe into the [[PayPal Mafia]] capital network. - The Collison brothers retain founder control; Stripe has never IPO'd, instead clearing employee liquidity through secondary tenders. ## Capital Stack and Valuation Arc - **Feb 2025** tender valued the company at **~$91.5B** — well off the $95B peak of 2021 but recovered from the $50B 2023 trough. - Major institutional holders include [[Founders Fund]], [[Sequoia Capital]], [[Andreessen Horowitz]], [[Thrive Capital]], [[General Catalyst]], GIC, [[Khosla Ventures]], and Allianz. - [[Keith Rabois]] is logged in this KB as an early Stripe investor via [[Khosla Ventures]]. ## Alumni Network (Stripe → AI / Tech Power) Stripe's most important KB connection is its **alumni pipeline**: - **[[Greg Brockman]]** — Joined Stripe as employee #4 in 2010, became CTO (2013–2015), then co-founded **[[OpenAI]]** in December 2015. The Stripe → OpenAI thread is one of the most consequential personnel movements in modern tech. - **[[Jan Sramek]]** — Worked at Stripe on "special projects" as an external contractor. Later founded **[[California Forever]]** in 2017; the Collisons subsequently appeared as personal LPs in his Solano County city project. - Multiple other Stripe alums have populated AI labs, fintech startups, and Founders Fund-orbit ventures. ## Stripe Press See [[Stripe Press]] for the full profile. A small but ideologically significant in-house publishing imprint that has become **part of the TESCREAL-adjacent intellectual canon**: - Publishes [[Tyler Cowen]]'s *[[Stubborn Attachments]]* (a foundational longtermism-friendly text) and [[J. Storrs Hall]]'s *[[Where Is My Flying Car]]*. - Reissues classic engineering and management texts in the techno-optimist tradition. - Functions as the publishing arm of the **Progress Studies** movement co-founded by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen. ## TESCREAL Connection Stripe-the-company is not itself a [[TESCREAL]] vehicle, but its founders, capital, alumni, and publishing arm all sit inside the bundle's adjacent ecosystem: - **[[Peter Thiel]]** seed → connects Stripe to the [[Founders Fund]] / [[Palantir]] / [[Anduril]] / [[PayPal Mafia]] axis - **[[Greg Brockman]]** → carried Stripe operational DNA into [[OpenAI]], the singularitarian flagship - **Stripe Press** → distributes the Progress Studies / techno-optimist literature (Andreessen-adjacent extropian thread) - **Patrick Collison** → co-author of the 2019 *Atlantic* "We Need a New Science of Progress" essay with [[Tyler Cowen]]; co-funder with [[Dustin Moskovitz]] of [[Open Philanthropy]]'s Abundance & Growth Fund ## Defense-Tech Footprint Effectively zero direct exposure. Stripe is a payments processor — no dual-use product, no Pentagon contracts, no defense vertical. The KB-relevant defense angles are all **transitive**: - Capital co-investors (Founders Fund, a16z) are heavy defense-tech backers (Anduril, Saronic, [[Shield AI]]). - The Collison brothers are personal LPs in [[California Forever]], whose 2025–26 strategic pivot is a defense-manufacturing pitch (Solano Shipyard, [[Saronic Technologies]] tenant). - Stripe processes payments for the broader economy, including defense contractors, but this is incidental rather than strategic. ## Draft Notes / To Expand - Add detail on the 2021 → 2023 valuation crash and tender mechanics - Trace Patrick's R&D-funding metascience advocacy ([[Fast Grants]] during COVID) - Document the Open Phil Abundance & Growth Fund co-investment in more detail - Cross-link to a future [[Progress Studies]] concept page - Map Stripe alumni who went on to defense-tech or AI labs beyond Brockman ## See Also - [[Patrick Collison]] - [[John Collison]] - [[Stripe Press]] — Publishing imprint / ideological infrastructure - [[Stubborn Attachments]] — Cowen, Stripe Press 2018 - [[Where Is My Flying Car]] — J. Storrs Hall, Stripe Press 2021 - [[Greg Brockman]] - [[OpenAI]] - [[California Forever]] - [[Jan Sramek]] - [[Founders Fund]] - [[PayPal Mafia]] - [[TESCREAL]]