---
title: "He Turned Down $1.2 Billion From Stripe. Now His Company Is Worth $8 Billion"
source_url: https://youtu.be/5qbMjvgDep0
captured_at: 2026-05-27
author: "CNBC International"
contributor: "ชิดชนก"
platform: youtube
---
# He Turned Down $1.2 Billion From Stripe. Now His Company Is Worth $8 Billion

youtube video by **CNBC International**, 10m51s, uploaded 2026-02-22. URL: https://youtu.be/5qbMjvgDep0
Tags: CNBC, CNBC International, CNBC Make It Founder Effect, Jack Zhang Co-Founder and CEO Airwallex, $8-billion-dollar fintech company, founders in fintech, Founder journeys and growth, tech finance payment solutions, entrepreneurs, rejecting 1.2 billion Stripe acquisition, overcoming challenges, learning from mistakes, market crash, covid-19, international expansion, work life balance, from coffee sho

## Shared in LINE Note+
- 2026-05-27 18:07 by ชิดชนก

## Description
Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, helped build one of the world’s fastest-growing fintech companies, now valued at $8 billion and generating more than $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.

Born in Qingdao, China, Zhang moved to Australia alone at 15. When his family’s finances collapsed, he worked 16-hour days in factories, restaurants and petrol stations to pay his tuition — a work ethic that later shaped his entrepreneurial push.

After making millions from side businesses in his 20s, Zhang felt unfulfilled. A frustrating payment issue at his Melbourne coffee shop led him and a group of friends to identify a larger problem: slow, expensive international transfers built on outdated infrastructure. In 2015, they founded Airwallex to rebuild cross-border payments from the ground up.

Just three years later, Irish-American financial services company Stripe offered to acquire Airwallex for $1.2 billion, but the founders turned the offer down. The years that followed brought turbulence, including fraud losses and Covid-related revenue hits.

Watch the video above to learn about how Jack Zhang and the Airwallex team recovered from that tumultuous period.

 #CNBC #CNBCMakeI