Stripe is giving off early Google vibes—for good and for bad

Good morning, it’s finance editor Jeff John Roberts pinch-hitting for Allie. Term Sheet readers of a certain age may recall when a young and still up-and-coming company called Google went on an acquisition spree for the ages. In a four-year span starting in 2003, the search giant hoovered up two ad tech firms, DoubleClick and AdSense, that gave it a full suite of digital advertising tools. And for good measure, it acquired the firm that built the tech behind Google Earth as well as two little startups called Android and YouTube. That shrewd run of M&A is a big reason why Google, now Alphabet, is today one of the dominant companies on the planet.

I raise all of this because Stripe has been on a shopping spree of its own that, if things go right, could one day prove as successful as what Google pulled off 20 years before. Leaving aside its aborted play for PayPal (more on that in a moment), Stripe has since late 2024 acquired two crypto players, Privy and Bridge, that were leaders in the fields of wallets and stablecoins respectively. The fintech giant has also purchased a firm called Ourum that specializes in account verification and bank transfers, as well as Metronome, which handles usage-based billing. For good measure, Stripe this month closed on a deal worth around $7.5 billion for the buzzy AI distribution service OpenRouter. 

Put it all together and Stripe, like Google before it, is strategically absorbing firms that will help it consolidate its existing lead in its core service, while also building capacity in two fields—in this case blockchain and AI—that will define the next decade of technology. 

That brings us to the aborted PayPal deal. The would-be acquisition, which was cooked up this spring, came undone this week after a recent uptick in PayPal’s share price suddenly made Stripe’s original offer of $60.50 per share look too cheap. Had the deal worked out, it would have added a critical additional piece to Stripe’s growing empire: A massive consumer-facing business to complement its existing merchant-heavy customer base.

According to James Wester, a research director at Javelin Strategies, the PayPal deal falling through may have been for the best. Wester points out that it would have been a tough cultural fit for Stripe, which he says is defined by a developer-focused ethos, and has little in common with a lumbering older brand like PayPal.

Wester also notes that Stripe can only bite off so much since, as a private company, it is relatively constrained in how much capital it has to throw around. Google, by contrast, carried out two of its major acquisitions—DoubleClick and YouTube—when it was flush with cash from its 2004 IPO.

As for the quality of Stripe’s acquisitions, and any forthcoming ones, it’s hard to predict how they will pan out.  Looking back at Google’s purchase of its ad tech stack, the obvious reaction is “OMG, what a steal, how did regulators let that go ahead?”—but that’s with the benefit of hindsight. It remains to be seen whether Stripe’s purchases will prove as prescient. As one competitor to whom I made the Google comparison pointed out, Yahoo made a lot of acquisitions in that era too—only to flame out and get bought by the phone company a decade later. Wester, though, thinks it’s unlikely that will be Stripe’s fate.

“As much as the analyst in me wants to look at these latest acquisitions for AI and stablecoins with a jaundiced eye, I can’t help but think they’ve been pretty good at this so far,” he said, adding that Stripe has been a master of anticipating where the payments landscape is going next.

In addition to a penchant for M&A, Stripe has another attribute that invites comparison to early era Google: Its knack for public relations. Even as the company has grown into a behemoth, its charismatic founders have preserved a down-home Irish image, burnished by the company’s “Cheeky Pint” video interview series. 

And unlike most fast-growing companies, Stripe makes no unforced errors. This can’t go on forever, of course. Just as sheer size and media glare forced Google to drop its “Don’t Be Evil” corporate logo, Stripe is likely to show sharper elbows in coming years. Then, there is the matter of antitrust, which became one of the few forces to slow Google down. Stripe is still not of the scale to worry about that yet—and antitrust seems to be out the window in the Trump era in any case—but don’t be surprised if all those acquisitions cause legal trouble down the road. 

For now, though, Stripe can enjoy its current sweet spot of being powerful and likable at the same time, just as Google did long ago.

See you tomorrow, 

Jeff John Roberts
X: @jeffjohnroberts
Email: jeff.roberts@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com