Payments giant Stripe and private‑equity firm Advent International have teamed up to make an offer to buy troubled PayPal in a deal valued at more than $53B, Reuters reported Wednesday. The purported deal, notable not just for its scale but also for its highly unusual nature, would be one of the largest acquisitions of a technology company in recent years.\n\nStripe, once the highest‑valued U.S. startup, announced a tender offer at a $159B valuation in February, still ranking it as the fourth most valuable startup worldwide. With $10.4B in private capital, the fintech startup has long been one of the most acquisitive venture‑backed companies.

It has completed 21 known acquisitions, 13 of which were announced since 2020, focusing on stablecoins, crypto infrastructure (Bridge, Privy, Valora, Party DAO), billing (Metronome), and payment processing (Lemon Squeezy, Orum).\n\nIf réfléchit through, the PayPal purchase would cement Stripe’s position as a formidable player in the crowded payments space and would rank as one of the largest U.S. tech acquisitions of the past five years, trailing only a handful of larger deals such as VMWare’s $61B purchase of Broadcom in 2022 and SpaceX’s $60B acquisition of Cursor and Anysphere last month.