PayPal

Reviewed ipo Updated Mar 13, 2026

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Location Palo Alto, CA
Founded 1998
Latest Stage IPO
Total Raised $216M
Website https://www.paypal.com
Acquired By eBay (2002, $1.5B); spun off as independent public company (2015)
Sector
fintech payments

Investors

Ron Conway Seed (1999)
Kevin Hartz Seed (1999)
Ken Howery Co-Founder (1998)
Scott Banister Angel / Board (1998)
SV Angel Angel (via Angel Investors LP) (2000)
A* Seed (1999)
Founders Fund Co-Founder (1998)
Long Journey Ventures Angel / Board (1998)

Founders

Peter Thiel Co-Founder & CEO
Max Levchin Co-Founder & CTO
Luke Nosek Co-Founder
Ken Howery Co-Founder & CFO
Yu Pan Co-Founder & Engineer
Elon Musk Co-Founder of X.com (merged with Confinity)

About

PayPal is an online payments platform that enables digital money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders 1. The company traces its origins to Confinity, founded in December 1998 by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek in Palo Alto, California 23. Early contributors Ken Howery and Yu Pan also played vital roles in its formative stages 2.

Confinity was initially focused on security software for handheld devices before pivoting to online payments after recognizing a significant market need 3. In March 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, a company founded by Elon Musk in March 1999 23. The merged company eventually focused entirely on the PayPal payment service and rebranded as PayPal 3.

Ron Conway’s Angel Investors LP was an early-stage investor in PayPal, backing the company as part of Conway’s prolific angel investing activity during the late 1990s internet boom 45.

PayPal went public on February 15, 2002, pricing its IPO at $13 per share on the Nasdaq and selling 5.4 million shares for approximately $70.2 million in gross proceeds at a valuation of roughly $800 million 618. Shares surged more than 50% on the first day of trading 618. On July 8, 2002, eBay announced an all-stock agreement to acquire PayPal for $1.5 billion (0.39 eBay shares per PayPal share) 719; the transaction closed on October 3, 2002 20. PayPal was spun off as an independent public company in July 2015, relisting on the Nasdaq 8.

The so-called “PayPal Mafia” – including Thiel, Musk, Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and others – went on to found or fund Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn 9.

Funding History

Round Date Amount Lead Investor(s) Key Co-Investors Valuation
Seed (Confinity) 1999-01 ~$500K Peter Thiel Scott Banister, Kevin Hartz Not disclosed 15
Series A (Confinity) 1999-06 $4.5M Nokia Ventures Deutsche Bank, William N. Melton Not disclosed 1516
Series C (X.com/PayPal) 2000-04-05 $100M Madison Dearborn Partners Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Bank, Hikari Tsushin, QUALCOMM, Singapore Telecommunications, LabMorgan, idealab Capital Partners Not disclosed 17
IPO 2002-02-15 $70.2M Public markets (Nasdaq: PYPL) — ~$800M 618
Acquisition by eBay (announced) 2002-07-08 $1.5B eBay — $1.5B 719
Acquisition by eBay (closed) 2002-10-03 $1.5B eBay — $1.5B 20

Sources: 234671011151617181920

Note: PayPal raised a total of approximately $216 million across 7 rounds before its IPO, according to Tracxn 12. Complete details of all intermediate rounds between Series A and the IPO are not fully documented in publicly available sources.

What Investors Say

Ron Conway (Angel Investors LP): Conway’s Angel Investors LP was an early-stage investor in PayPal. Conway has described his investment approach as standing by founders: “How you build the network is having a good reputation. The first company I invested in, I stood by those founders, and then those founders recommended me to other founders” 13.

What Founders Say

Peter Thiel on the early days: “You were at the forefront of some sort of revolutionary thing. It’s incredibly exciting and incredibly scary. It was like ‘we’re going to take over the world’ or ‘we’re all going to die’ and you move between those two several times a day” 314.

Peter Thiel on PayPal’s vision: “We’re definitely on to something big,” Thiel told employees in late 1999, predicting that PayPal would become “the Microsoft of payments” 14.

Peter Thiel on money: “There’s always something super mysterious, powerful, and important about money” 14.

Peter Thiel on regulation: “I often thought of it at the time that we were in a race between technology and politics. The politicians didn’t like us, but if we got the PayPal network to be big enough, it would sort of overwhelm the regulators and they’d have to accept it as a fait accompli” 14.

Sources

  1. PayPal website, “About PayPal,” accessed March 2026. https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/about↩

  2. GBS Pod, “PayPal: The Greatest Startup Story of All Time,” accessed March 2026. https://gbspod.com/blog/paypal-greatest-startup-story-of-all-time↩↩↩↩

  3. Quartr, “The PayPal Story: Online Payment Pioneers,” accessed March 2026. https://quartr.com/insights/company-research/the-paypal-story-online-payment-pioneers↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. Ron Conway Wikipedia article, accessed March 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Conway↩↩

  5. EBSCO Research, “Ron Conway Biography,” accessed March 2026. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/ron-conway↩

  6. The Motley Fool, “If You Invested $10,000 in PayPal’s IPO, This Is How Much Money You’d Have Now,” November 2019. https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/11/22/if-you-invested-10000-in-paypals-ipo-this-is-how-m.aspx↩↩↩↩

  7. CNN, “eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion,” July 8, 2002. https://edition.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/07/08/ebay.paypal/index.html↩↩↩

  8. PayPal Newsroom, “PayPal Celebrates Listing on Nasdaq and Completes Separation from eBay Inc.,” July 20, 2015. https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2015-07-20-PayPal-Celebrates-Listing-on-Nasdaq-and-Completes-Separation-from-eBay-Inc↩

  9. Fleximize, “Meet the Dons who run Silicon Valley – the PayPal Mafia,” accessed March 2026. https://fleximize.com/paypal-mafia/↩

  10. Confinity Crunchbase profile, accessed March 2026. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/confinity↩

  11. Crunchbase, “Series A - PayPal,” accessed March 2026. https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/paypal-series-a–353e272d↩

  12. Tracxn, “PayPal - 2026 Company Profile, Team, Funding,” accessed March 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/paypal/__XAo5FNrBPPa9BCWs59TohTz2wpB9isH8_nClARiKWnM↩

  13. Fortune, “Silicon Valley investing legend Ron Conway on the lessons learned from Napster,” December 2, 2020. https://fortune.com/2020/12/02/ron-conway-sv-angel-napster-google-facebook/↩

  14. Startup Archive, “Peter Thiel tells the founding story of PayPal,” accessed March 2026. https://www.startuparchive.org/p/peter-thiel-tells-the-founding-story-of-paypal↩↩↩↩

  15. VatorNews, “When PayPal was young: the early years,” February 5, 2018, accessed April 2026. https://vator.tv/2018-02-05-when-paypal-was-young-the-early-years/↩↩↩

  16. Wikipedia, “Confinity,” accessed April 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity↩↩

  17. X.com press release, “X.com Announces $100 Million Financing Round,” April 5, 2000, accessed April 2026. https://www.paypalobjects.com/html/pr-040500.html↩↩

  18. Wikipedia, “Timeline of PayPal,” accessed April 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_PayPal↩↩↩↩

  19. SEC Filing (PayPal Inc., 8-K Ex-99.1), “eBay to Acquire PayPal,” July 8, 2002, accessed April 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702026650/a2084015zex-99_1.htm↩↩↩

  20. SEC Filing (PayPal Inc., 8-K Ex-99.1), “eBay Completes PayPal Acquisition,” October 3, 2002, accessed April 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702037693/a2090698zex-99_1.htm↩↩↩