In 2010, Patrick Collison, then 22, and John Collison, then 20, built Stripe's payment infrastructure in a Palo Alto apartment, demoing a webpage that accepted a credit card with seven lines of code. Before turning 25, they convinced Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator’s Paul Graham to back them. Fifteen years later, that demo has grown into the infrastructure behind $1.4 trillion in annual payment volume. Ireland’s entire 2024 GDP was roughly $560 billion, and by current run-rate estimates for 2025, Stripe moves close to three-and-a-half times that output. Stripe is now headquartered in South San Francisco and Dublin, with roughly 8,000 employees. Its most recent tender offer, completed in February 2025, valued the company at $91.5 billion.