Stripe acquires crypto wallet infrastructure provider Privy

Payment technology company Stripe Inc. has agreed to acquire cryptocurrency wallet infrastructure provider Privy for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2021 as Horkos Inc., Privy has as its mission to make privacy and user-owned wallets the default online experience. The company provides a developer-first wallet infrastructure designed to help applications seamlessly integrate crypto capabilities with familiar login flows, such as email, SMS or single sign-on.

Privy’s flagship offering is embedded self‑custody wallets that are generated for each user during signup, without requiring external clients or seed phrase management. To cover security, the company uses secure enclaves and Shamir’s Secret Sharing, along with private keys that are split and reconstructed only in trusted environments, so neither applications nor Privy hold the full key.

Developers interact with the wallets offered by Privy through a unified application programming interface that supports wallet creation, transaction signing, key management, gas abstraction and webhook-based on-chain event handling. Privy also supports policy-driven controls, such as transaction limits, allowlists, multisig and multifactor authentication to help govern usage and security.

One notable application of the company’s technology is to provide wallets for nonfungible tokens, with token marketplace OpenSea using Privy to allow customers to purchase NFTs directly from its platform.

“We built Privy to abstract away that complexity — making digital assets feel like the rest of the Internet: simple, intuitive and instant,” co-founder Henri Stern said in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “Privy gives you one simple API, so you can securely spin up powerful wallets, sign transactions and integrate any on-chain system.”

According to Stern, Privy today powers more than 75 million accounts across more than 1,000 developer teams, orchestrating billions in transactions and enabling users to earn, move and use new assets online.

Coming into its acquisition, Privy had raised $41.3 million in funding across three rounds, according to Tracxn. Investors in the company included Ribbit Capital Management, Sequoia Capital Operations, Paradigm Management, Coinbase Global Inc., Electric Capital Management, BlueYard Capital Management GmbH and Archetype VC.

The move by Stripe to acquire Privy comes after the company acquired fintech startup Bridge Ventures Inc. in February. The terms of the deal, first announced in October, were not disclosed, but reports suggested that Stripe paid $1.1 billion for the company.

Image: Privy