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Stripe Offers to Buy PayPal

July 15, 2026

Happy Wednesday.

We’re live on YouTube and 𝕏.

The current thing in tech and business is Stripe and Advent’s offer to buy PayPal for $53B.

Today’s Lineup

Breaking Points Co-Founder and Co-Host Saagar Enjeti at 11:30 AM
Prospero Chairman George Kailas at 12:00 PM
Emergent Founder & CEO Mukund Jha at 12:10 PM
Walden Robotics Co-Founder & CEO Russ Tedrake at 12:20 PM
Former Virginia Governor and Red Cell Partners Partner & Chairman Glenn Youngkin at 12:30 PM

Run of ShowStripe CEO Patrick Collison | Alamy

Stripe Offers to Buy PayPal, by John Coogan

This idea had been kicked around the timeline a bit throughout last year after PayPal stock had gotten hammered (it’s down over 80% since pandemic highs). Sheel Mohnot outlined the opportunity in a long post calling out Visa, Mastercard, Elon, and JP Morgan as leading options:

But Stripe is a fun option. A Thiel-backed fintech company buying a Thiel-founded fintech company. Truly full circle. The first offer is already facing pushback: Here’s Michael Burry on why he’s not selling:

Cassandra UnchainedShort Thoughts July 15, 2026 PYPL/IBM/HCA/MorePayPal Buyout Offer…Read morea month ago · 254 likes · 66 comments · Michael Burry

The basic structure of the deal is as follows. $53B for all of PayPal, $60.50 per share. 28% premium over yesterday’s closing price but a steep discount to last year’s valuation. $50B has been committed in bank financing, but the FT is reporting that PayPal has been reluctant to engage with the offer. Stripe is much bigger than PayPal at this point, having recently done a tender offer at $159B and there are plenty of potential synergies across Stripe’s infrastructure and PayPal’s consumer distribution. Stripe is partnering with private-equity firm Advent International for the deal and they will point to slowing branded PayPal checkouts along with fierce competition from Apple Pay, Shop Pay, and Klarna as reasons to sell. PayPal will likely push back with the fact that they just brought in a fresh CEO, have a restructuring plan already in place and have a clear path to get the share price back to the $70s it traded at a year ago.

Overall, Stripe has done an excellent job expanding into many adjacent markets, Atlas is a great example, but they’ve never cracked consumer (or ever really tried to). It would be awesome to watch this play out, but it seems like it will take a few more rounds of bids to get a deal across the finish line.

Clip Spotlight: Dylan Byers believes California AG’s case against the $111B Paramount-WBD merger is weak

Byers says the suit relies on an “archaic” definition of the media market focused on theatrical and cable distribution, rather than the digital platforms actually dominating attention:

“David Ellison wants Warner Bros. Discovery to have some semblance of the scale that would be required to compete in a world that is dominated by Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Apple, Amazon, the list goes on.”

“The notion that somehow a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery is going to be this massive, dominant business that is going to corner every aspect of the market...that’s just not real.”

“I think Bonta has an uphill climb in that regard. But he can certainly create headaches, and certainly legal fees, for Ellison for many months.”

Headlines

Reuters: Stripe, Advent offer to buy PayPal for more than $53 billion, sources say

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