Stripe, Bay Area's 2nd-largest Tech Startup, Lays Off 300

Stripe, a payments technology behemoth and the Bay Area's second-most valuable startup, abruptly laid off 300 employees on Monday.

Rob McIntosh, Chief People Officer of the South San Francisco-based company that makes online and in-person payment processors, disclosed the changes in an internal memo. Business Insider published the memo, and SFGATE spoke with Stripe spokeswoman Casey Becker, who confirmed its validity.

McIntosh stated that the company's "business performance continues to be strong" and that Stripe intends to increase its employment by 17% to 10,000 by the end of the year - but first, a few hundred workers will lose their jobs. By Tuesday, laid-off employees were already flocking to LinkedIn.

According to the CEO, "several team-level changes are needed to ensure we have the right people in the right roles and locations to execute against our plans."

Rather than implementing cuts throughout the year, McIntosh writes that Stripe's leaders were instructed to "pull these decisions forward" so that everything happened simultaneously. According to the memo, most cutbacks have targeted product, engineering, and operations employees. McIntosh praised the laid-off employees, adding, "Our confidence that this is the right business decision doesn't make it easier for those leaving or losing valued teammates." 

Stripe's financials are mostly not public because it is a privately held startup. However, the corporation has been in flux since 2022, when it laid off over 1,000 employees. CEO Patrick Collison cited the economic climate and fears of a looming recession at the time. Stripe's valuation was also reduced several times, lowering the value of employees' shares in the firm.

According to Bloomberg, Stripe experienced a revival last year, with its valuation rising to about $70 billion. That's less than its top of $95 billion in 2021, but it's still not chump change: among the country's privately held tech businesses, only Texas-based SpaceX and San Francisco-based OpenAI are worth more. 

Stripe was previously headquartered in San Francisco but relocated its central office south in 2021 after opposing a 2018 city proposition that taxes corporations and uses the proceeds to combat homelessness. The firm also maintains a second headquarters in Ireland, where co-founders Patrick and John Collison are from, and offices in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other locations.

As of Tuesday morning, Stripe had not provided California's Employment Development Department with a WARN mass layoff notice, as required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act whenever a company cuts more than 50 employees.