Stripe, a San Francisco payments provider and one of the world’s most valuable private companies, said on Wednesday that it had raised new funding that values it at $50 billion, down from $95 billion in 2021, in a sign of how the air has come out of start-up dealmaking.

The start-up, which provides payment processing software to companies including Amazon, raised $6.5 billion in its new financing from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Thrive Capital. Stripe, which said it didn’t need the money to run its business, plans to use the funding to help employees sell their company shares and cover the taxes related to their stock compensation.

“Current and former Stripes have helped build foundational economic infrastructure for millions of businesses around the world, and this transaction gives them the opportunity to access the value they’ve helped create,” said John Collison, a founder and the president of Stripe.

The fall in Stripe’s valuation reflects a difficult period for start-ups. Over the past year or so, as interest rates and inflation rose and the global economy began to soften, start-up funding — which had been fed by low interest rates and cheap money — declined. Many young companies have conducted mass layoffs and cut other costs. Last year, investments in U.S. start-ups dropped 31 percent to $238 billion, according to PitchBook.