John and Patrick Collison sold their first company for $5 million when they were still teenagers. Now, a little more than a decade later, their second startup is valued at $35 billion, making them Ireland’s richest entrepreneurs.
The latest valuation for their online payments processor, Stripe Inc., gives John, 29, and Patrick, 31, an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion each, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, enough for inclusion in the 500-member ranking. Stripe declined to comment.
On Thursday, Stripe announced that it had raised $250 million in its latest funding round, giving the San Francisco-based company a $35 billion valuation. The only U.S. startups that had higher valuations this year are vaping giant Juul Labs Inc. and We Co., the parent of office-sharing real estate firm WeWork.
But the valuations for both of those companies are now in doubt. A growing number of vaping illnesses and deaths has prompted some governments to ban Juul’s products, and Wall Street estimates for We’s valuation have tumbled amid scrutiny of co-founder Adam Neumann’s unorthodox financial dealings with the firm.
The Irish brothers’ fortunes exceed those of countrymen Denis O’Brien, the telecom tycoon, and financier Dermot Desmond. The Collisons’ wealth ranks alongside Silicon Valley peers such as Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Travis Kalanick and ahead of Airbnb Inc.’s Brian Chesky, Snap Inc.’s Evan Spiegel and Spotify Technology SA’s Daniel Ek, according to calculations by Bloomberg.