Stripe’s $1.1 billion deal for crypto firm Bridge marks much-needed win for VCs
The Stripe logo on a smartphone with U.S. dollar banknotes in the background.
Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images
In March 2022, venture capitalist Chris Ahn was pushing to get into a hot crypto startup that was trying to make it easy for businesses to transact using digital currencies.
The company was Bridge Network. As part of his pitch, Ahn flew to a small town in northern Montana with a term sheet in hand for founders Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, who had both previously worked at Coinbase and Block.
“Nobody else had flown out to see them in person,” Ahn, who was a partner at Index Ventures at the time, recounted in an interview on Tuesday.
The three of them hiked together on a path with melting snow, and then conversed over drinks and dinner, as Ahn aimed to convince the founding duo that they should take Index’s money. At the restaurant, he looked to seal the deal.
“I told them I was going to the bathroom, and I ran over to my car, grabbed the term sheet and came back,” Ahn said. “It’s hard to fit a piece of paper in a jacket without crumbling it, and I didn’t want to give them a crumpled piece of paper, so I left it in the car.”
Index landed the investment, getting into Bridge’s seed round in 2022. The firm was part of a more recent round, in August of this year, that included Sequoia and Ribbit Capital and valued Bridge at about $350 million, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named because the valuation was confidential. Also in the deal was Haun Ventures, founded by former Andreessen Horowitz partner Katie Haun.
Ahn left Index to join Haun in 2022. Both his old firm and his new employer have reason to celebrate this week, after Stripe agreed to buy Bridge for $1.1 billion. With that outcome, Index and Haun are poised to triple their investment in a matter of months.
An Index spokesperson declined to comment.
It’s a particularly notable exit for venture investors during an extended IPO drought, and marks a big win for crypto, which has had few of them despite bundles of cash pouring into the industry.
For Stripe, one of the most richly valued tech startups, the Bridge purchase will be its largest to date. Bridge said the transaction is still subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions and is expected to close in the coming months.
‘Serious about stablecoin’
Bridge describes itself as the Stripe of crypto, specializing in making it easier for businesses to accept stablecoin payments without having to directly deal in digital tokens. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the value of a real-world asset like the U.S. dollar. Customers include Coinbase and SpaceX.
“It’s a sign that Stripe is serious about stablecoins and crypto,” Ahn said. “Payments were the original use case for crypto, and it’s finally here.”
Stripe is paying a hefty premium.
Investors familiar with Bridge’s financials said annual revenue is in the range of $10 million to $15 million. At the low end of the range, that’s a multiple of 110 times revenue, and at the high end, it’s a revenue multiple of over 70.
“The reason why Bridge is so valuable is because it’s prohibitively difficult for a company to use this new stablecoin tech without developer tools that makes the tech easy to use,” said Ahn.
Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures said that while Bridge has rivals in the category, it’s the most successful stablecoin infrastructure business in the world, excluding the issuers like Circle and Tether.
“Almost every stablecoin startup we talk to is building on Bridge in some capacity whether it’s orchestration or issuance,” said Carter. “They are totally ubiquitous.”
Stripe saw its valuation plummet from $95 billion in 2021 to $50 billion last year, as private tech companies across the board took a major hit from the recalibration of the public markets. Its valuation reportedly rebounded to $70 billion this year as part of a secondary share sale.
Patrick Collison, chief executive officer and co-founder of Stripe Inc., left, smiles as John Collison, president and co-founder of Stripe Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Studio 1.0 television interview in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Friday, March 23, 2018.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Brothers Patrick and John Collison, who founded Stripe in 2010, have intentionally steered clear of the IPO process and have given no indication that an offering is on the near-term horizon. They’ve got a big business, with total payment volume surpassing $1 trillion in 2023.
Given private market demand for the company’s stock, the company has been able to offer some liquidity to early investors and employees in other ways.
“The private markets have been so generous with providing capital and secondary liquidity to shareholders that, if I’m the Collison brothers and I’m sitting around the table, I’m thinking, ‘Why do I want to go public?'” said David Golden, a partner at Revolution Ventures who previously led JPMorgan Chase’s tech investment banking practice. “Why bother if the private markets are willing to reward you with basically public market premiums and valuations and let you have secondary sales to keep your employees happy?”
When asked to comment, Stripe referred CNBC to CEO Patrick Collison’s post on X about the deal.
Collison called stablecoins “room-temperature superconductors for financial services” in his post, and said that Stripe is going to build the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.
Bernstein analysts are bullish on what the deal means for the $160 billion U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin market, noting in a report that the acquisition “validates the usage and growth of stablecoins as a legit use case for public blockchains.”
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies during a remote video hearing held by subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee on “Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation” in Washington, U.S., March 25, 2021.
Handout | Via Reuters
Block jumped more than 5% on Monday, leading a rally in shares of fintech companies as analysts downplayed the threat of JPMorgan Chase’s reported plan to charge data aggregators for access to customer financial information.
The recovery followed steep declines on Friday, after Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan had circulated pricing sheets outlining potential fees for aggregators like Plaid and Yodlee, which connect fintech platforms to users’ bank data.
In a note to clients on Monday, Evercore ISI analysts said the potential new expenses were “far from a ‘business model-breaking’ cost increase.”
In addition to Block’s rise, PayPal climbed 3.5% on Monday after sliding Friday. Robinhood and Shift4 recorded modest gains.
Broader market momentum helped fuel some of the rebound. The Nasdaq closed at a record, and crypto rallied, with bitcoin climbing past $123,000. Ether, solana, and other altcoins also gained.
Evercore ISI’s analysts said that even if JPMorgan’s changes were implemented, the most immediate effect would be a slight bump in the cost of one-time account setups — perhaps 50 to 60 cents.
Morgan Stanley echoed that view, writing that any impact would be “negligible,” especially for large fintechs that rely more on debit, credit, or stored balances than bank account pulls for transactions.
PayPal doesn’t anticipate much short-term impact, according to a person with knowledge of the issue. The person, who asked not to be named in order to speak about private financial matters, noted that PayPal relies on aggregators primarily for account verification and already has long-term pricing contracts in place.
While smaller fintechs that depend heavily on automated clearing house (ACH) rails or Open Banking frameworks for onboarding and compliance may face real pressure if the fees take effect, analysts said the larger platforms are largely insulated.
WATCH: Congress moves to redraw $3.7 trillion crypto market rules, opening door to Wall Street
The global EV market is still charging ahead. According to new numbers from global research firm Rho Motion, 9.1 million EVs were sold worldwide in the first half of 2025, up 28% compared to the same period last year. But not every region is accelerating at the same pace.
China and Europe are doing the heavy lifting
More than half of the world’s EVs this year have been bought in China. That market hit 5.5 million sales in the first six months of 2025 – a 32% jump year-over-year. Around half of new cars bought in China are now electric.
While some Chinese cities’ subsidies have dried up, Rho Motion expects momentum to pick back up later in the year as more funding is released.
In Europe, 2 million EVs were sold in the first half of the year, up 26%. Battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales also rose 26%, thanks in part to affordable models like the Renault 4 (pictured) and 5 entering the market. Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) weren’t far behind, growing 27% year-to-date. Chinese automakers are leaning into PHEVs as a way to work around the EU’s new tariffs on BEVs.
Spain is leading the pack with EV sales soaring 85% so far this year. Its generous MOVES III incentive program was extended in April and has kept sales strong. The UK and Germany are also seeing solid growth – 32% and 40%, respectively. France, however, is slumping. With subsidies cut, EV sales there have dropped 13%.
North America is stuck in the slow lane
Things aren’t looking quite as bright in North America. EV sales in the US, Canada, and Mexico are up just 3% so far this year.
Mexico is the one bright spot, with a 20% boost. The US is up 6%. But Canada is down a whopping 23%.
And things could get bumpier. On July 4, Trump signed Congress’s big bill into law, which axes all the Inflation Reduction Act EV tax credits. Those consumer credits for EVs now officially end on September 30.
Just over half of the EVs sold in the US this year qualified for those credits. Rho Motion predicts a rush in Q3 before the subsidies disappear – and a decline in sales after that.
Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester said, “With Trump’s latest cuts in his ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ the US could struggle to see any growth in the EV market overall in 2025.”
Global EV sales snapshot, H1 2025 vs H1 2024
- Global: 9.1 million (+28%)
- China: 5.5 million (+32%)
- Europe: 2.0 million (+26%)
- North America: 0.9 million (+3%)
- Rest of world: 0.7 million (+40%)
Read more: China breaks records as global EV sales hit 7.2 million in 2025
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Lucid’s electric sedan can drive further, charge faster, and packs more advanced tech than most of the competition. That might explain why it’s leading the segment. The Lucid Air remained the best-selling luxury EV sedan in the US after widening its lead in the Q2.
The Lucid Air is America’s best-selling luxury EV sedan
The 2025 Lucid Air Pure arrived as the “World’s most efficient car” with an EPA-estimated range of 420 miles and a record 146 MPGe.
It just set a new Guinness World Record last week for the longest journey by an electric car after travelling 749 miles (1,205 km) on a single charge.
That record was set in the range-topping Lucid Air Grand Touring model, which is rated for up to 512 miles of EPA-estimated range. On the WLTP scale, it’s rated at 597 miles (960 km). Either way, it still crushed the estimates.
According to second-quarter sales data, released by Kelley Blue Book on Monday, the Lucid Air is still America’s best-selling luxury EV.
Lucid sold 2,630 Air models in Q2, up 10% from the previous year. Through the first half of 2025, Lucid Air sales are up 17% with 5,094 units sold.
Tesla, on the other hand, only sold 1,435 Model Ss during the quarter, 71% fewer than it did in Q2 2024. Tesla Model S sales in the US are down 70% through the first half of the year at 2,715.
Although Porsche Taycan sales were up 32% with 1,064 models sold, the significantly upgraded 2025 model year was expected to see even more demand. Porsche has 2,083 Taycans in the US this year, up just 1% from 2024.
Other luxury EV sedans, such as the BMW i5 (1,434), i7 (820), and the Mercedes EQS (498), experienced steep double-digit sales declines year-over-year.
And it’s not just electric luxury sedans. The Lucid Air is currently outselling many gas-powered vehicles in its segment.
Lucid’s first electric SUV, the Gravity, is also rolling out. Although only five were sold in the second quarter, Lucid is quickly scaling production. Lucid aims to produce 20,000 vehicles this year, more than double the roughly 9,000 it built in 2024.
Earlier today, Lucid’s interim CEO, Marc Winterhoff, confirmed during an interview with Bloomberg that the company expects higher Gravity output in the second half of the year.
The interview was at the grand opening of Panasonic’s new battery cell plant in De Soto, Kansas. Winterhoff said Lucid will start using new cells from the facility, but not until next year.
Lucid’s CEO stressed the importance of establishing a local supply chain, as policy changes under the Trump Administration are taking effect. Lucid and Panasonic are collaborating to localize EV materials, such as graphite. Last month, Lucid secured a multi-year supply agreement with Graphite One for US-sourced Graphite.
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