Patrick Collison

Patrick Collison
Collison in 2015
Patrick Collison
Born	9 9, 1988
Birthplace	Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	Entrepreneur, software engineer, CEO
Known for	Stripe, Fast Grants, Arc Institute
Education	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards	BT Young Scientist of the Year (2005)
Website	[[patrickcollison.com patrickcollison.com] Official site]

Patrick Collison (born 9 September 1988) is an Irish entrepreneur, software engineer, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Stripe, a financial technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Born in the rural village of Dromineer in County Tipperary, Ireland, Collison displayed an early aptitude for computer science and programming, winning Ireland's Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005 at the age of sixteen. He subsequently attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before leaving to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. In 2010, alongside his younger brother John Collison, he co-founded Stripe, which grew from a small startup into one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world. Collison has also pursued interests in scientific research and philanthropy, co-founding Fast Grants in 2020 to accelerate funding for COVID-19-related research and co-founding the Arc Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research organization, in 2021. In 2025, he was named to the TIME100 Philanthropy list and was appointed to the board of directors of Meta Platforms.

Early Life

Patrick Collison was born on 9 September 1988 in Dromineer, a small village on the shores of Lough Derg in County Tipperary, Ireland. He grew up in a rural setting, far from the technology hubs that would later define his career. Collison showed an early interest in computers and programming, teaching himself to code at a young age. He attended Gaelscoil Aonach Urmhumhan, an Irish-language primary school, before enrolling at Castletroy College for his secondary education.

Collison's exceptional abilities became publicly apparent when he entered the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, one of Ireland's most prestigious science competitions for secondary school students. In 2004, at the age of fifteen, he competed in the 40th edition of the exhibition. The following year, in January 2005, he won the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition at age sixteen, receiving the BT Young Scientist of the Year award for his work on developing a new programming language. His project demonstrated a level of sophistication in computer science that was unusual for a secondary school student and attracted considerable attention in the Irish media.

Growing up alongside his younger brother John, who would later become his business partner, Patrick was part of a household that evidently encouraged intellectual curiosity. John Collison also went on to win recognition at the Young Scientist competition, and the two brothers were featured together in Irish media as notable young achievers. An Irish media profile described the Collison brothers as "two to watch" in the Irish technology landscape.

Education

Collison completed his secondary education at Castletroy College in Limerick, Ireland. Following his success at the Young Scientist competition and his growing interest in computer science, he gained admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, one of the world's foremost institutions for science and technology education. He enrolled at MIT to study computer science but did not complete his degree, choosing instead to leave university to focus on entrepreneurship.

Before attending MIT, Collison had already begun exploring business ventures. In 2007–2008, while still a teenager, he and his brother John developed and sold a software project, which brought them early recognition in both Irish and international media. A BBC report in 2008 described Collison's early entrepreneurial achievements. The Irish Herald also profiled him as the "million dollar boy who changed the face of the web." This early commercial success and the recognition it brought informed his subsequent decision to leave MIT and pursue technology startups full-time.

Career

Early Ventures

Before founding Stripe, the Collison brothers gained experience in the technology startup world. While still teenagers in Ireland, they developed Auctomatic, a software company focused on tools for online auction sellers. The company attracted investor interest and was eventually acquired, providing the brothers with capital and credibility in Silicon Valley circles. The sale of Auctomatic was reported by several media outlets, including BBC News, which covered the story of the young Irish entrepreneurs making an impact in the technology industry. RTÉ also reported on Collison's early business activities, highlighting his transition from prizewinning student to technology entrepreneur.

The experience of building and selling Auctomatic gave Collison firsthand exposure to the difficulties of accepting payments online — a problem that would directly inspire the creation of Stripe. In a 2009 appearance on RTÉ's The Saturday Night Show with Miriam O'Callaghan, Collison discussed his entrepreneurial journey and future plans.

Founding and Growth of Stripe

In 2010, Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe, initially operating in stealth mode. The company's core premise was to simplify online payments for developers and businesses by providing a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that could be integrated into websites and applications with minimal code. Bloomberg later described the origin story as "two brothers turned seven lines of code into a $9.2 billion startup," referring to the simplicity of Stripe's initial integration process.

Stripe emerged from stealth in 2011, attracting early attention from technology media. TechCrunch reported on the company's launch, comparing it to PayPal and highlighting its developer-focused approach to payments. The company quickly attracted prominent investors and early customers, positioning itself as a new kind of infrastructure provider for internet commerce.

Under Collison's leadership as CEO, Stripe expanded its product offerings beyond simple payment processing to include tools for subscription billing, fraud prevention, international payments, business incorporation, and financial reporting. The company's customer base grew to include both small startups and large enterprises, with major technology companies adopting Stripe's infrastructure. A Wired UK profile noted that Stripe's clients came to include companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

Stripe's growth in valuation was substantial. In 2016, Forbes reported that a new investment round had made Patrick Collison one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires. By 2019, both Patrick and John Collison were reported by Bloomberg to have become Ireland's richest self-made billionaires.

Stablecoins and Crypto Infrastructure

In 2025, under Collison's direction, Stripe deepened its involvement in cryptocurrency-related financial infrastructure. In September 2025, Stripe and the venture firm Paradigm launched a product called "Tempo" related to stablecoin payments. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Collison explained why businesses were increasingly turning to stablecoins as a medium for transactions, citing speed, lower costs, and global accessibility as key factors driving adoption. This move signaled Stripe's continued expansion beyond traditional card-based payment processing into emerging financial technologies.

Board Appointment at Meta

On 11 April 2025, Meta Platforms announced that Collison had been elected to the company's board of directors, effective 15 April 2025, alongside Dina Powell McCormick. The appointment was reported by Reuters and Axios, which noted Collison's position as the CEO of a fintech company and his broader involvement in technology leadership. The appointment placed Collison in a governance role at one of the world's largest technology companies in addition to his duties as Stripe's CEO.

Views on Artificial Intelligence

In a 2025 interview with Business Insider, Collison discussed his personal use of artificial intelligence tools. He described AI as "terrific" for answering factual questions and said he enjoyed using AI systems for research and inquiry. However, he expressed a preference for his own writing style over AI-generated prose, indicating that while he found AI useful as a tool for information retrieval, he did not rely on it for creative or stylistic output.

Collison also appeared on the New York Times podcast Hard Fork in July 2025, where he discussed Stripe's strategy and broader technology topics.

Advocacy on Housing

Collison has publicly engaged with policy issues related to housing affordability, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area where Stripe is headquartered. In 2018, the San Francisco Business Times reported that Collison was among several technology CEOs who spoke out about the housing crisis affecting the region's workers.

Philanthropy and Research

Fast Grants

In 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Collison co-founded Fast Grants with economist Tyler Cowen. The initiative was designed to provide rapid funding to scientists working on COVID-19-related research, bypassing the traditionally slow grant-review process of conventional scientific funding bodies. The program aimed to get money to researchers within days rather than the months or years typical of government and institutional grants. The initiative attracted attention as an innovative model for science funding during a public health emergency.

Arc Institute

In 2021, Collison co-founded the Arc Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research organization, alongside bioscientists Silvana Konermann and Patrick Hsu. The institute was established to support fundamental biological research with a model that gives scientists greater freedom to pursue long-term projects without the constraints of traditional grant cycles. The founding of the Arc Institute reflected Collison's broader interest in the progress of science, which he has written about extensively.

Science and Progress

Collison has publicly engaged with questions about the pace and nature of scientific progress. In 2018, he co-authored a piece in The Atlantic examining the concept of diminishing returns in science — the question of whether scientific breakthroughs are becoming harder to achieve despite increasing investment. His personal website includes a curated bookshelf that reflects his wide-ranging intellectual interests.

Personal Life

Collison is a native of Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland, and holds Irish citizenship. His younger brother, John Collison, serves as president of Stripe, making them one of the most prominent sibling partnerships in the technology industry. Collison has maintained a personal website where he shares reading lists, essays, and other intellectual interests.

Collison is known as an avid reader. His personal website features an extensive bookshelf spanning subjects including economics, science, history, philosophy, and literature. The Irish Times has noted the Collison brothers' background in the context of Ireland's Young Scientist competition, describing the event as a place "where creativity and charm collide" and highlighting how former participants have gone on to significant achievements.

Recognition

Collison has received recognition both in Ireland and internationally for his entrepreneurial and philanthropic work. His earliest major accolade was the BT Young Scientist of the Year award in 2005, which he received for his project at the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

In 2016, a funding round for Stripe led Forbes to identify Collison as one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

In May 2025, Time Magazine named Collison to its TIME100 Philanthropy list, recognizing his philanthropic activities including Fast Grants and the Arc Institute. The accompanying profile described his trajectory "from schoolboy coder in rural Ireland to Silicon Valley tech founder and billionaire philanthropist."

His appointment to the board of directors of Meta Platforms in April 2025 represented a further marker of his standing in the global technology industry, placing him in a governance role at one of the world's largest companies.

Legacy

Collison's career has been defined by the intersection of technology entrepreneurship, infrastructure building, and an intellectual engagement with science and progress. Stripe, under his leadership, has reshaped how businesses of all sizes accept payments online, and the company's APIs have become a foundational layer of internet commerce. Bloomberg's characterization of Stripe's origin — "seven lines of code" turning into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise — has become part of the broader narrative of developer-led innovation in Silicon Valley.

In Ireland, Collison and his brother are among the most prominent figures to have emerged from the country's technology sector. Their journey from the Young Scientist competition to founding a major global technology company has been cited in Irish media as an example of the country's capacity to produce technology entrepreneurs. Their status as Ireland's richest self-made billionaires, as reported by Bloomberg in 2019, underscored the scale of Stripe's growth.

Beyond Stripe, Collison's involvement in science funding through Fast Grants and the Arc Institute has contributed to broader discussions about how scientific research is funded and organized. His co-authored work in The Atlantic on the question of diminishing returns in science and his establishment of institutions designed to support long-term fundamental research suggest an engagement with questions about scientific progress that extends beyond his role as a technology executive.

References

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