Digital payments company Stripe raised US$600-million in its latest round of funding, valuing it at $95-billion, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

That makes Stripe the most valuable private company Silicon Valley has produced, according to the Financial Times.

Investors in the decade-old San Francisco- and Dublin-headquartered company’s latest funding include units of Allianz, AXA, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research, Sequoia Capital and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency.

The company said it would use the capital to invest in its European operations, support surging demand and expand its Global Payments and Treasury Network. “We’re investing a ton more in Europe this year, particularly in Ireland,” said John Collison, president and co-founder of Stripe.

The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, managed by the National Treasury Management Agency, said in a statement it had invested $50-million in Stripe.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said in a statement the partnership between the Irish state and Stripe would create over a thousand jobs in five years and boost Ireland’s economy.

Opportunity

A senior executive at Stripe said in December that the company had plans to expand across Asia, including in Southeast Asia, Japan, China and India. Of the 42 countries in which Stripe is active, the company said 31 are in Europe.

“While Stripe already processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year for millions of businesses worldwide, the opportunity ahead is much larger … than it was when the company was started 10 years ago,” said Dhivya Suryadevara, Stripe’s chief financial officer. — Reported by Scott DiSavino and Radhika Anilkumar, (c) 2021 Reuters