Stripe named ‘most innovative company in the world’

Stripe has been named as the "most innovative company in the world", in a prestigious list that also includes Irish-founded start-ups, Evervault and Moonshot.

Currently ranked as the most valuable privately owned company in Silicon Valley, the online payments firm founded by Patrick and John Collison has received the accolade for “kick-starting the carbon-removal industry”, rather than for innovation in the financial services sector.

The company, which is valued at $95 billion (€87 billion), has been praised for Stripe Climate, which allows customers to direct a fraction of their revenue to help scale emerging carbon removal technologies.

As of the end of 2021, more than 15,000 companies across 40 countries had joined the programme. Stripe Climate last year increased its carbon removal commitments to $15 million.

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Stripe also topped Fast Company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) list for its carbon removal commitment strategy.

In addition, two start-ups backed by online payments company – Ramp and Steps – are included in Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies list.

Ramp came first in the “finance”’ sub-category after becoming the fastest- growing corporate card in the US with 2,000 enterprise customers.

500 companies

Stripe participated in a $300 million investment in Ramp last year, just months after co-leading a $115 million funding round for the start-up. The company has also taken part in two funding rounds for Step, a US mobile banking start-up aimed at teenagers, which is ranked in third place in Fast Company's "small and mighty" subcategory.

Overall, Fast Company has ranked more than 500 companies across a wide number of categories, including advertising, personal finance, sports, data science, media, retail, beauty and education.

Evervault comes in eighth spot in Fast Company’s “most innovative security companies” sub-category ranking, while Moonshot is in tenth place.

Founded by former BT Young Scientist award winner Shane Curran, Evervault is a highly regarded data security company that has raised $16 million from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Moonshot, meanwhile, is an Irish co-founded tech start-up that uses data analytics to tackle online threats.

The start-up, which last year secured $7 million in investment and announced plans for a new software development centre in Dublin, was founded by Irishman Ross Frenett and Vidhya Ramalingam in 2015.

The company develop technologies and methodologies to reach people both engaging in and affected by a range of online dangers – including disinformation, human trafficking, gender-based violence and child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Rothco, the Irish advertising agency acquired by Accenture in 2017, also features in the rankings, coming in second place in the joint ventures subcategory for its partnership with Warner Music. The two companies have collaborated on saylists, a collection of playlists available on Apple Music that combine music and technology to highlight key phonetic sounds that can be help in speech therapy.