Stripe writes to investors: AI singularity has begun, privatization has become an advantage Beating AI News: Three executives from Stripe stated in their latest investor letter that they consider January 1st of this year as the "beginning of the singularity". This is not to say that AI has surpassed humans, but Stripe believes that multiple long-term trends have shown clear turning points, such as a significant increase in the speed of new company startups. Stripe itself has also experienced this wave of growth. In the first half of this year, net income increased by 41% year-on-year, and free cash flow increased by 43%. 88% of Forbes AI 50 companies are using Stripe, including OpenAI and Anthropic; The remaining 12% have not yet begun commercialization. The proportion of revenue contributed by AI companies and encryption companies has also more than doubled compared to a year ago. Stripe now sees "capital" and "intelligence" as the two most important digital streams for the future of the enterprise. In the past, Stripe helped the company manage money, and now they want to help the company manage AI calls, including whether a task is worth doing, which model to use, and who will pay for it. OpenRouter has just made up for this, with its token consumption growing at a compound weekly rate of about 9% this year. Stripe has announced the acquisition of OpenRouter, stating that it is the largest acquisition in its history and the transaction is expected to be completed in the coming weeks. Axios stated that the transaction price exceeded $8 billion, mainly paid in stock. Stripe has also made it clear that maintaining privatization is currently an advantage. AI makes the future more difficult to predict, and companies do not want to sacrifice long-term decisions for short-term market pressures. Despite continuous expansion and acquisitions in recent years, Stripe's total number of shares is still lower than three years ago. Since Series D financing 10 years ago, its private equity pricing per share has grown at an annualized rate of approximately 31%. [Original link]