In their annual letter to the Stripe community, cofounders Patrick and John Collison attributed the rapid growth to long-standing investments in artificial intelligence that “continue to pay off, increasing revenue for existing customers, encouraging more businesses to switch to Stripe, and helping new companies reach significant scale unprecedentedly quickly...In each of the last six years, Stripe has reinvested a much higher proportion of our earnings in R&D than any comparable company. We believe this ability will prove particularly important in the coming years, as stablecoins, AI, and other forces reshape the landscape. Stripe’s growth to date is evidence of the intense market demand for programmable financial services. The associated transformation is still early.”

AI investments fuel revenue growth for businesses on Stripe

Half of the Fortune 100 now uses Stripe, and the company continues to attract the world’s largest businesses—including News Corp Australia, NVIDIA, PepsiCo and Comcast—as they seek to reinvent their business models and grow revenue from existing activity.

Stripe has invested in AI models that are delivering significant revenue and performance uplifts for its users. News Corp saw a 5% increase in authorisation rates and retained more than 10,000 readers that would have otherwise inadvertently churned. Hertz increased authorisation rates by 4% when it moved its payments to Stripe, while Forbes saw a 23% boost in revenue with Stripe managing its subscription payments. Car-sharing marketplace Turo captured $114 million in additional annual revenue with Stripe’s Optimised Checkout Suite. 

“We’re continually retraining dozens of machine learning models that optimise every part of the transaction flow over an economy-scale dataset. The resulting optimisations are big enough that businesses see them in their topline revenue figures. Businesses simply start making more money when they switch to Stripe,” the Collisons wrote.

Durable profitability underpins significant R&D investments

Stripe is profitable, and expects to remain so in the coming years. This allows the company to invest much of its operating earnings back into research and development to help its users navigate the changing business landscape. In each of the last six years, Stripe has reinvested a much higher proportion of its earnings in R&D than any comparable company.

One example of such an investment is Stripe Billing, which is now used by more than 300,000 companies and manages nearly 200 million active subscriptions. Stripe’s Revenue and Finance Automation Suite, with Billing at its core, recently passed a $500 million revenue run rate.

The AI boom is happening on Stripe

Stripe is already the revenue engine of the AI era, with 78% of the Forbes AI 50 building on its platform (including all of the AI 50 that are currently selling a product online). The company’s data reveals that top AI startups are building businesses at record pace, hitting AUD 7.9 million in annualised recurring revenue (ARR) 13 months faster than comparable earlier software companies. Cursor raced to over AUD 159 million in ARR in just three years, Lovable hit AUD 27 million ARR in 3 months, and Bolt reached AUD 32 million ARR in just two months.

With AI set to change how online commerce works, Stripe is also optimising its products for AI agents. Over 700 agent startups launched on Stripe last year, and the company revealed that its toolkit for developers building AI agents is already being downloaded thousands of times a week. ElevenLabs used Stripe’s toolkit to let a voice agent autonomously manage subscriptions and refunds, while Perplexity and Payman are using Stripe to enable new agentic ways to spend and move money.

The best way to build with stablecoins

As tangible uses for stablecoins emerge and transaction volumes surge, Stripe is already helping some of the world’s largest organisations to assemble stablecoin strategies.

Last year, Stripe acquired stablecoin orchestration platform Bridge, which is already used by organisations like SpaceX to repatriate funds from Starlink sales in Argentina, Nigeria, and beyond; DolarApp to help individuals receive USD payments from payroll providers; and the US Government.

“Improvements to the basic usability of money make economies more prosperous. Consider the transitions from coins to banknotes, from the gold standard to fiat currency, and from paper instruments to electronic payments. Stablecoins are a new branch of the money tree. Such transitions occur with some regularity over the centuries, and the effects tend to be large,” wrote the Stripe cofounders.

As tangible uses for stablecoins emerge and transaction volumes surge, Stripe is already helping some of the world’s largest organisations to assemble stablecoin strategies.

For more information, Stripe’s full annual letter is available online.