Stripe says the singularity already arrived — more than eight months ago.
Executives at the payment processing giant told investors Wednesday in a letter obtained by Axios that they decided the singularity, roughly defined as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, arrived at the start of 2026 and that they've been acting accordingly.
"It's a fuzzy and perhaps already overworked term, but we decided that January 1st marked the beginning of the singularity, and we have since been operating on that basis," the letter said.
"The singularity is often invoked alongside millenarian forecasts, but, in our case, we simply saw a large inflection in long-run trends (for example, a huge increase in the rate of new firm creation), and we decided that we ought to take the phase change seriously," the letter from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, president John Collison, and president, technology and business, William Gaybrick, continued.
The letter makes the Stripe leaders the latest tech execs to declare the singularity is already here.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in July that we were in the singularity, adding, "I've been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it's going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world." In January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared on X, "We have entered the Singularity."
Not everyone agrees. Several AI experts previously told Business Insider that they did not agree with Altman's take.
Stripe's letter to investors came as the company announced Wednesday it was acquiring OpenRouter, an AI model marketplace startup. Stripe did not mention the singularity in the public statement about the acquisition.
The investor letter said the company has two goals as AI reshapes society: speed up AI adoption across the economy and ensure that AI deployment gives people more control over their economic lives.
"The singularity appears to be accelerating our core business," the executives wrote, adding that the company's revenue for the first half of the fiscal year rose 41% year-over-year.
"Stripe is, of course, a private company today. We view this as a growing advantage as we venture into the vicissitudes of the singularity," the letter said. "The world is becoming harder to predict and we expect that deft helmsmanship will be required of every company. We're fortunate to have a corporate structure that helps us steer the right long-term course."
Stripe declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.
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Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.Popular storiesDisaster on Denali: Inside a 1,000-foot fall on America's highest peakThrifting is more popular than ever. It's also never been worse.Rolex wouldn't service the vintage watch my mom inherited. Watchmakers say it happens all the time.A tiny, invasive bug and the climate crisis are changing how guitars are made, and shifting the course of music historyThe tourism free-for-all is overGovernment-run boarding schools were founded to 'civilize' Native Americans. Hundreds of dead children remain buried in the schoolyard graves.Meet the Texas minister who helps fly dozens of women to New Mexico every month to get abortionsPeople are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but the air pollution is so bad, it's forcing many to stay insideInside Kabul: An aid worker reveals the devastating chaos that erupted during the US exit from Afghanistan
