Patrick Collison posted an update on Privy, the wallet infrastructure company Stripe acquired a little over a year ago. The numbers since the deal closed:
- Assets in Privy wallets up ~25x
- Monthly active developers up ~3x
- Revenue up ~9x
- Nearly $25B a month in transaction volume
Ramp, Deel, Klarna, Hyperliquid and thousands of other companies now build embedded banking on it. And inside Stripe, Privy is being wired into Treasury, Link and Connect.
This is why you buy a startup. You buy it for how far you can scale it once it’s yours. Where it is on the day you buy it almost doesn’t matter, other than as proof. Proof that you have a winning product with product-market fit, that the Big Acquirer can massively scale.
The revenue itself at the time of the deal is often a rounding error for a big acquirer. $20m, $100m, in incremental revenue is irrelevant to Salesforce, Stripe, etc.
And yet almost every strategic deal still gets priced off revenue. Both things are true at once, and founders who understand why tend to get better outcomes.
Stripe Wrote Down Its Thesis, and Revenue Wasn’t In It
Patrick was explicit about why Stripe bought Privy. Three factors: stablecoin growth, self-custody as a way to reach more of the world, and rising demand for programmable financial infrastructure.
What’s missing from that list? Privy’s ARR.
Stripe was buying a position in three trends it believed would get much bigger, plus a team that could build in that space. Privy’s revenue at signing was a rounding error relative to Stripe. A 9x increase on a small base is still small to a company Stripe’s size. The revenue line is the least interesting number in the whole update.
The interesting numbers are 25x in assets and $25B a month in volume. Those tell you Privy became core infrastructure. That was the bet.
The 9x Came From Stripe’s Distribution, Not Just Privy’s Execution
Privy’s team clearly executed. They shipped deposit addresses, earning on balances, digital asset accounts, custodial wallets and Stripe’s own stablecoin cards this year alone.
But a big chunk of the 9x came from what Stripe plugged Privy into:
- Stripe’s onramps and stablecoin payment rails
- Stripe’s licenses, which take a startup years to get
- Stripe’s fiat and card issuing stack
- Integration into Treasury, Link and Connect, products with enormous existing customer bases
A standalone Privy would have had to build or buy every one of those. Inside Stripe, they came on day one. That’s the whole math of a strategic acquisition. The acquirer is paying for what the company becomes when it’s attached to the acquirer’s distribution, licenses and customers. The seller’s current revenue measures what it can do alone, which is the one scenario the buyer isn’t planning for.
Patrick also called out agents. Merit Systems, Nevermined and others are already using Privy wallets so agents can transact and earn. Nobody priced that in a year ago, because it barely existed. It’s now one of the most compelling reasons Privy matters to Stripe.
Yet, Current Revenue Multiples Are How Deals Are Agreed
So if revenue barely matters to the strategic logic, why does nearly every deal still get anchored on it?
Because the people approving the deal need a number they can all agree on, that’s fair to all sides. At least for a hot deal.
The corp dev team and the CEO may be buying a thesis. But the CFO, the board, and in a public company the analysts all want to see a price that maps to something. “We paid 40x revenue” is a sentence a board can evaluate against comps. “We paid for our position in agentic payments in 2028” is not.
So revenue becomes the language of the deal even when it isn’t the reason for the deal. A few things follow from that:
- Revenue sets the floor and frames the negotiation. It’s the starting anchor. The strategic premium gets layered on top.
- The premium is where the real money is. Two companies with identical ARR can sell for wildly different prices to a strategic, because one fills a hole on the acquirer’s roadmap and one doesn’t.
- Financial buyers (e.g, private equity firms) are very different. PE prices on revenue, margins and cash flow because they plan to run the business roughly as it is. If your likely buyer is financial, your current numbers matter a great deal more.
What I Saw After Adobe Bought EchoSign
I’ve been on the other side of this. Adobe acquired EchoSign in 2011.
Within weeks of my leaving, Adobe killed EchoSign’s free edition. That free edition was a big part of how we grew. From where I sat, it was a clear sign the acquirer had a different plan for the business than I did.
Adobe Sign eventually became a meaningful product for Adobe. But the lesson stuck with me. The price is set on the day you sign. The outcome is set by what the acquirer does in the 12 to 24 months after. A great acquirer with real distribution can 9x you. An acquirer without a clear plan can stall you or dismantle the parts that worked.
Privy is the good version. Stripe had a thesis, wrote it down, then put real infrastructure behind it.
What This Means If You’re Talking to a Strategic
A few decisions founders actually face here:
Sell the post-acquisition curve, not the trailing twelve months. Map out exactly what your product does when it’s plugged into their customer base, their licenses, their distribution. Put numbers on it. Privy at Stripe is the template: same team, 9x revenue in a year once the rails were there.
Don’t burn your last two quarters manufacturing ARR for the multiple. Pulling forward deals or discounting to juice revenue before a process rarely moves a strategic’s price much. It can easily damage the story of what you’ll become.
Figure out which part of the acquirer’s roadmap you fill. If you can’t name the specific product lines you’d integrate into, like Privy into Treasury, Link and Connect, you’re probably being priced as a revenue tuck-in, and the multiple will reflect that.
Know whether your buyer is strategic or financial. The pitch is completely different. One cares about where you can go. The other cares about where you are.
Ask what happens on day 30. Who runs the product. What gets integrated first. What gets cut. The EchoSign free edition lesson is that the deal terms are only half the outcome.
$25 Billion a Month, One Year After the Deal
The number Patrick led with wasn’t revenue. It was 25x in assets and nearly $25B a month moving through Privy wallets. That’s what Stripe bought, and none of it was visible in Privy’s P&L on the day the deal was signed.
Your revenue gets you into the room and gives everyone a number to negotiate around. What you become inside the acquirer is what they’re actually paying for.
