Block’s 30% plunge in February leads fintech sell-off, while Stripe shows benefit of staying private
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
Stripe has once again shown why sometimes it’s better to be private.
During a February sell-off for fintech stocks, Block plunged almost 30%, its steepest decline since 2022, alongside drops of 20% or more for PayPal and Coinbase and a 9% slide in shares of SoFi. Meanwhile, Stripe on Thursday announced a tender offer for employee shares at a $91.5 billion valuation, making the payments company significantly more valuable than any of its public market peers.
“In general, they benefit from being private because there’s a handful of stocks that people want to buy and they trade at a premium to public valuations,” said Larry Albukerk, founder of EB Exchange, which helps facilitate trades in shares of pre-IPO companies.
He said Stripe is part of an exclusive group of private companies, along with SpaceX, Anthropic and Anduril, which are all seeing sky-high demand from investors.
“For every one of those, there’s 100 companies that don’t get that kind of premium,” Albukerk said.
The Collison brothers — Patrick and John — founded Stripe in 2010, a year after Jack Dorsey started Square, which is now part of Block. Crypto exchange Coinbase and online lender SoFi were both launched after Stripe.
While all of those companies went the traditional route of raising large amounts of capital from prominent venture capital firms, only Stripe has chosen to stay private. To relieve some pressure for liquidity, Stripe regularly allows early investors and employees to sell a portion of their stake. The tender offer this week marks a 40% increase from a year ago and gets the company close to its peak valuation of $95 billion that it reached in the frothy days of the Covid pandemic.
“We are not dogmatic on the public vs. private question,” John Collison, the company’s president, told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin this week, adding that Stripe has “no near-term IPO plans.”
Stripe’s peers have all had to report quarterly results of late, and it’s created a hefty dose of volatility and some concern. Last week, Block reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that missed analysts’ expectations, pushing the stock down 18%, its third-worst one-day drop on record.
PayPal shares tumbled even though the company blew past estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance. Coinbase topped expectations with revenue soaring 130%, powered by a post-election spike in crypto prices. Coinbase was a leading contributor to Republicans’ sweeping victory in November in its effort to help push forward a more crypto-friendly agenda in Washington, D.C.
But Coinbase fell earlier this week to its lowest price since just before the election, tumbling in tandem with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
It’s been a rough stretch for stocks overall, particularly in the tech sector. The Nasdaq fell about 5% in February, its worst month since September 2023. The S&P 500 declined 2.3%.
Investors have been rattled in recent days by President Donald Trump’s promise of tariffs and economic reports flashing warning signs. Notably, initial filings for unemployment benefits hit their highest level of the year last week in another potential sign of weakness in the labor market.
Fintechs can be more sensitive to economic conditions than the broader tech sector because they’re more directly effected by interest rates, employment data and consumer confidence.
Private market premium
By remaining private, Stripe is able to skirt the daily, weekly and monthly stock swings while also disclosing far fewer numbers to the public regarding its financial health.
The biggest revelation Stripe offered in its annual letter on Thursday is that it generated $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up 38% from the year prior. The company said it was profitable in 2024, and expects to remain so this year, without providing specifics, and the only revenue figure it offered was that its finance and tax reporting unit topped a $500 million run rate.
Kelly Rodriques, CEO of private securities marketplace Forge, said Stripe’s valuation jump shows there’s enthusiasm for private companies, even some that aren’t focused specifically on artificial intelligence. Forge’s Private Market Index, which tracks demand for shares in private companies, has surged more than 33% in the past three months, and that’s before Stripe’s latest announcement.
“Stripe’s valuation increase could be further evidence of the broad rally we’re observing in the private market that is now rippling beyond the AI sector, which has driven most of the momentum over the last several months,” Rodriques said in an email.
Albukerk noted that another aspect to the spike in Stripe’s price is the scarcity of volume available for investors and the difficulty in getting access to it other than through the tender offers.
It’s one of those private companies “where there’s a lot of demand and very little supply,” he said.
However, just being private doesn’t eliminate Stripe’s other challenges.
In his interview on “Squawk Box,” John Collison highlighted the growing complexity of financial compliance and said banks are becoming more conservative in their partnerships with fintechs.
“We have started to see the financial system become more involved in financial policy enforcement,” Collison said. “And then you tend to get these occasional flare-ups from time to time.”
Both Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have distanced themselves from the company, according to The Information, prompting Stripe to turn to Deutsche Bank and other institutions for key services. Collison didn’t provide details to CNBC, but acknowledged that Stripe has had to navigate shifting relationships.
“Banks are tightly regulated, and they in general want to have a sound book of business,” he said. “They don’t want to get into arguments with their regulator.” According to The Information, Stripe has tripled its risk and compliance headcount to 700 employees over the past two years.
The area with the most regulatory scrutiny has been crypto, which was a notoriously challenging area for companies to operate during the Biden administration. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation recently released internal records obtained via FOIA requests, revealing that regulators had sent “pause letters” urging banks to reconsider relationships with crypto firms.
Trump has made a point of loosening restrictions on crypto, and one of his first actions as president was to sign an executive order to promote the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and work toward potentially developing a national digital asset stockpile
Stripe made its biggest jump into crypto with the closing this month of its $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge, a provider of stablecoin infrastructure. Stripe’s goal with the deal is to enable more payments via crypto, as Bridge focuses on making it easier for businesses to accept stablecoin payments without having to directly deal in digital tokens.
In its annual letter, Stripe said that stablecoin transactions more than doubled between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the same period last year.
“The fundamentals for stablecoin adoption have only recently fallen into place, enabling the explosive growth we now see,” the company wrote.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.
WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Stripe co-founder and president John Collison
Environment
CPSC warns Rad Power Bikes owners to stop using select batteries immediately due to fire risk
In an unprecedented move, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a public safety warning urging owners of certain Rad Power Bikes e-bike batteries to immediately stop using them, citing a risk of fire, explosion, and potentially serious injury or death.
The warning, published today, targets Rad’s lithium-ion battery models RP-1304 and HL-RP-S1304, which were sold with some of the company’s most popular e-bikes, including the RadWagon 4, RadRunner 1 and 2, RadRunner Plus, RadExpand 5, RadRover 5 series, and RadCity 3 and 4 models. Replacement batteries sold separately are also included.
According to the CPSC, the batteries “can unexpectedly ignite and explode,” particularly when exposed to water or debris. The agency says it has documented 31 fires linked to the batteries so far, including 12 incidents of property damage totaling over $734,000. Alarmingly, several fires occurred when the battery wasn’t charging or when the bike wasn’t even in use.
Complicating the situation further, Rad Power Bikes – already facing significant financial turmoil – has “refused to agree to an acceptable recall,” according to the CPSC. The company reportedly told regulators it cannot afford to replace or refund the large number of affected batteries. Rad previously informed employees that it could be forced to shut down permanently in January if it cannot secure new funding, barely two weeks before this safety notice was issued by the CPSC.
For its part, Rad pushed back strongly on the CPSC’s characterization. A Rad Power Bikes Spokesperson explained in a statement to Electrek that the company “stands behind our batteries and our reputation as leaders in the ebike industry, and strongly disagrees with the CPSC’s characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe.”
The company explained that its products meet or exceed stringent international safety standards, including UL-2271 and UL-2849, which are standards that the CPSC has proposed as a requirement but not yet implemented. Rad says its batteries have been repeatedly tested by reputable third-party labs, including during the CPSC investigation, and that those tests confirmed full compliance. Rad also claims the CPSC did not independently test the batteries using industry-accepted standards, and stresses that the incident rate cited by the agency represents a tiny fraction of a percent. While acknowledging that any fire report is serious, Rad maintains that lithium-ion batteries across all industries can be hazardous if damaged, improperly used, or exposed to significant water intrusion, and that these universal risks do not indicate a defect specific to Rad’s products.
The company says it entered the process hoping to collaborate with federal regulators to improve safety guidance and rider education, and that it offered multiple compromise solutions – including discounted upgrades to its newer Safe Shield batteries that were a legitimate leap forward in safety in the industry – but the CPSC rejected them. Rad argues that the agency instead demanded a full replacement program that would immediately bankrupt the company, leaving customers without support. It also warns that equating new technology with older products being “unsafe” undermines innovation, noting that the introduction of safer systems, such as anti-lock brakes, doesn’t retroactively deem previous generations faulty. Ultimately, Rad says clear, consistent national standards are needed so manufacturers can operate with confidence while continuing to advance battery safety.
Lithium-ion battery fires have become a growing concern across the US and internationally, with poorly made packs implicated in a rising number of deadly incidents.
While Rad Power Bikes states that no injuries or fatalities have been tied to these specific models, the federal warning marks one of the most serious e-bike battery advisories issued to date – and arrives at a moment when the once-dominant US e-bike brand is already fighting for survival.
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Environment
Rivian’s e-bike brand launches $250 smart helmet with breakthrough safety tech and lights
ALSO, the new micromobility brand spun out of Rivian, just announced official pricing for its long-awaited Alpha Wave helmet. The smart helmet, which introduces a brand-new safety tech called the Release Layer System (RLS), is now listed at $250, with “notify for pre-order” now open on ALSO’s site. Deliveries are expected to begin in spring 2026.
The $250 price point might sound steep, but ALSO is positioning the Alpha Wave as a top-tier lid that undercuts other premium smart helmets with similar tech – some of which push into the $400–500 range. That’s because the Alpha Wave is promising more than just upgraded comfort and design. The company claims the helmet will also deliver a significant leap in rotational impact protection.
The RLS system is made up of four internal panels that are engineered to release on impact, helping dissipate rotational energy – a major factor in many concussions. It’s being marketed as a next-gen alternative to MIPS and similar technologies, and could signal a broader shift in helmet safety standards if adopted widely.
Beyond protection, the Alpha Wave also packs a surprising amount of tech. Four wind-shielded speakers and two noise-canceling microphones are built in for taking calls, playing music, or following navigation prompts. And when paired with ALSO’s own TM-B electric bike, the helmet integrates with the bike’s onboard lighting system for synchronized rear lights and 200-lumen forward visibility.
The helmet is IPX6-rated for water resistance and charges via USB-C, making it easy to keep powered up alongside other modern gear.
Electrek’s Take
This helmet pushes the smart gear envelope. $250 isn’t nothing, but for integrated lighting, audio, and what might be a true leap forward in crash protection, it’s priced to shake things up in the high-end helmet space.
One area I’m not a huge fan of is the paired front and rear lights. Cruiser motorcycles have this same issue, with paired tail lights mounted close together sometimes being mistaken for a conventional four-wheeled vehicle farther away. I worry that the paired “headlights” and “taillights” of this helmet could be mistaken for a car farther down the road instead of the reality of a much closer cyclist. But hey, we’ll have to see.
The tech is pretty cool though, and if the RLS system holds up to its promise, we might be looking at the new bar for premium e-bike head protection.
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Georgia is putting more federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) dollars to work, with $24.4 million allocated to 26 new DC fast-charging stations across the state.
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has selected private-sector partners to build and operate the new stations, which will be located along federally designated Alternative Fuel Corridors. Each site will have four DC fast chargers available 24/7 and, with a minimum of 150 kW per port, capable of delivering a full recharge in as little as 20 minutes, depending on the EV.
This is the second round of Georgia’s NEVI awards. GDOT mapped out 33 priority sites near highway exits and interchanges in mostly rural areas to close gaps left after the first round in 2024. The response was strong: the EV charging industry submitted 41 proposals to cover 26 of those locations.
Six winners were selected: Pilot Travel Centers, Silver Comet Energy, Universal EV, PowerUp America, Love’s Travel Stops, and EnviroSpark Energy Solutions.
Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) said, “We appreciate Georgia DOT for fulfilling the state’s commitment to a robust, reliable fast-charging network that meets federal standards and serves communities across Georgia.”
Georgia was allocated about $135 million through the NEVI program, part of President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The federal program covers up to 80% of the project costs, with private partners covering the balance.
Round 2 follows a legal battle earlier this year, when a lawsuit filed by several states (not Georgia) compelled the Trump Administration to release funds owed from the NEVI Formula Program. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to obstruct the NEVI program in June, clearing the way for planned NEVI EV charging projects to continue.
Read more: Court says US must free up billions in illegally-frozen electric car charger funds
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