I can't speak for the specific case of Stripe, but it's fairly common for private companies to have a "tender offer" in which employees have the opportunity to sell some portion of their equity. This is often done in conjunction with a new investment round.

Tender offers.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/tender_offer

https://carta.com/learn/equity/liquidity-events/tender-offer...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(secondary markets are sometimes an option, depending on stock transfer restrictions)

Bankruptcy court?

FTX bought 8% of Anthropic for $500m in 2021.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/josipamajic/2026/03/18/ftx-owne...

Company I worked for had a deal where I could sell back to the company at any time.

The price was determined by a formula based on revenue and such, so I always knew what they were worth.

I was not allowed to sell to anyone else though.

There's a newish term for this: RLO, Recurring Liquidity Opportunity. These are tender offers at some recurring interval. Even some companies that have a shorter lifespan (say 7 years) offer this.

Stripe might buy back the shares at a good price. They might be able to sell on secondary markets.

Private/secondary markets.

regular tender offers