The digital payments firm Stripe has been valued at $95bn (£68m) after a funding round that makes the company the most valuable private business to come out of Silicon Valley. The company, which is dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, raised $600m from investors including Ireland’s sovereign wealth fund (NTMA), Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Sequoia Capital. Stripe’s valuation has almost tripled in less than a year, having been valued at $36bn after a funding round last April. The $95bn tag pushes it ahead of Elon Musk’s space rocket company SpaceX, valued at $74bn in February when it raised $850m in equity, to become the most valuable US-based tech startup. It is still, however, some way behind ByteDance, the privately owned Chinese company behind TikTok, which is valued at $180bn. The company, which was founded by the Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, now aged 32 and 30, plans to use the new cash to invest in its European operations, and its Dublin office in particular. The move is intended to support “surging demand” across Europe, which is home to 31 of the 42 countries the company operates in. Stripe’s largest European customers include Jaguar Land Rover, Waitrose, Mountain Warehouse, Klarna and Deliveroo. “We’re investing a ton more in Europe this year, particularly in Ireland,” said the president and co-founder, John Collison. “Whether in fintech, mobility, retail or SaaS [software as a service], the growth opportunity for the European digital economy is immense.” Stripe will also use the funds to fuel its global payments and treasury network and expanding the kind of software and services it offers to businesses hoping to increase their revenue. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, has invested $50m, which will go towards creating 1,000 new jobs at Stripe in the country over the next five years. Conor O’Kelly, the chief executive of the Irish fund, said: “We’re delighted to back Ireland’s and Europe’s most prominent success story, and, in doing so, to help millions of other ambitious companies become more competitive in the global economy.” The firm recently appointed the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney to its board of directors, which also includes Diane Green, the chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Christa Davies, the chief financial officer of Aon. Dhivya Suryadevara, the Stripe chief financial officer who joined from General Motors in 2020, said: “The pandemic taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieved – and paid for – online. “While Stripe already processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year for millions of businesses worldwide, the opportunity ahead is much larger … than it was when the company was started 10 years ago.”