Who Is Patrick Collison? Stripe Co-Founder and CEO Profile (2027)
Patrick Collison is the Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe, the payments and financial infrastructure company he started with his brother John. Stripe's own Sessions page lists him as Cofounder and CEO, and a January 2026 RTÉ report and an August 2026 Fortune article use the same description.
He grew up in Ireland, left MIT twice, and also co-founded the nonprofit Arc Institute. This page uses public professional information only.
Current role and company
Stripe's Sessions 2025 page names Patrick Collison as Cofounder and CEO. His brother John Collison is described as co-founder and president of Stripe in an April 2026 a16z podcast listing. His personal site says he mainly works on Stripe and lives in California.
- CompanyStripe, which says more than 5 million businesses build on it (Stripe about page).
- TitleCofounder and CEO.
- Valuation$159 billion, in the tender offer Stripe announced on February 24, 2026.
Career path
- Ireland, then MIT. He grew up in Ireland and won the Young Scientist competition in 2005, per RTÉ. Fortune reports he enrolled at MIT at age 16 to study mathematics.
- Auctomatic. Fortune reports he left MIT within months to launch the e-commerce software company Auctomatic with his brother John, and that they sold it for $5 million.
- Back to MIT, then Stripe. Per the same article he returned to study mathematics and physics, then left about a year later to start Stripe, so he dropped out twice.
- Arc Institute. Arc's about page says the nonprofit was started by Silvana Konermann, Patrick Hsu and Patrick Collison, and lists him as Co-Founder.
What he is known for
- Co-building Stripe. He and John run Stripe, whose 2025 annual letter reports $1.9 trillion in total volume.
- Arc Institute. Arc is an independent nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto, California. Its mission is to accelerate discovery and uncover the root causes of complex diseases.
- Side projects listed on his own site. His site names Stripe Atlas, Frontier (a carbon removal purchasing coalition started by Stripe), investments in California Forever and Esmeralda, and the New Aesthetics grant program and Progress Studies, both started with Tyler Cowen.
- Advice on dropping out. At Y Combinator Startup School in July 2026 he said his urgency to leave school was unnecessary in hindsight, as Fortune reported.
Leadership style and philosophy
These points come from his own recent talks and interviews. At Startup School he called his old belief that startup chances were fleeting a poor intuition, and said dropping out is not totally a trapdoor. In Dublin in January 2026 he told RTÉ that Stripe has always been a bipartisan company that must work reliably under any government, and said the world is volatile. On the TBPN podcast he said token thieves account for one in every six new customer signups at AI companies, according to Fortune in May 2026.
Key numbers
Company-reported figures, with the period shown. They are Stripe's, not his personal figures.
- Total volume$1.9 trillion in 2025, up 34% from 2024 and about 1.6% of global GDP (Stripe 2025 annual letter, February 24, 2026).
- Tender offer valuation$159 billion (Stripe, February 24, 2026).
- Product updatesMore than 350 in 2025 (Stripe, February 2026).
- Stablecoin payment volumeRoughly doubled in 2025 to about $400 billion (Stripe, February 2026).
- Revenue suiteOn track for a $1 billion annual run rate in 2026, per the letter.
- Arc Institute14 investigator laboratories and 400+ staff, per Arc's about page.
What to watch next
Worth tracking: Stripe's agentic commerce and stablecoin products, including the Tempo blockchain it unveiled in September 2025, and how new-business formation on Stripe develops after he said in 2026 that it was nearly twice a year earlier.
Questions people ask
Who is Patrick Collison?
He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe and a co-founder of the Arc Institute.
Is Patrick Collison still Stripe's CEO?
Yes. Stripe's Sessions page lists him as Cofounder and CEO, and RTÉ, a16z and Fortune used that title in 2026.
Did Patrick Collison finish college?
No. Fortune reports he left MIT twice, first to start Auctomatic and then to start Stripe.
What is the Arc Institute?
An independent nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto, California, that Collison co-founded. It was started by Silvana Konermann, Patrick Hsu and Collison.
What was Stripe's total volume in 2025?
Stripe's annual letter reports $1.9 trillion, up 34% from 2024.
Sources
- Stripe Sessions 2025: AMA with Patrick and John Collison · Title, Sessions 2026 dates
- Stripe about page · Businesses on Stripe
- Stripe 2025 annual letter announcement · Volume, valuation, product figures
- Patrick Collison personal site (about) · Ventures, location, background
- Arc Institute about page · Arc founders and facts
- RTÉ (January 8, 2026) · Title, Young Scientist remarks
- Fortune (August 4, 2026) · MIT path, Startup School remarks
- Fortune (May 7, 2026) · Token theft remark
- a16z podcast (April 28, 2026) · Titles of both brothers
- Wikimedia Commons photo · Hero photo, CC BY 2.0
Facts were read from the linked pages on October 31, 2026, partly through a fetch tool that returns summaries, so confirm details on the original pages. The hero photo is a 2015 photo by JD Lasica from Wikimedia Commons. This page covers public professional information only.
Top photo: JD Lasica, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons