Stripe says we're living in the singularity, and therefore, regrettably, can't IPO.

In an investor letter obtained by Axios, the payments company calls the singularity "a fuzzy and perhaps already overworked term," but says it "decided that January 1st marked the beginning of the singularity." What Stripe means by that is "a large inflection in long-run trends (for example, a huge increase in the rate of new firm creation)."

The company admits it doesn't know exactly what's coming, only that it will be "vast." "Nobody can know with specificity how AI will reshape our world," the letter reads, noting that "many predictions from wise individuals have already been abjectly falsified." Stripe says it wants to approach the uncertainty "with humility."

Stripe argues it's better positioned to navigate the singularity as a private company, able to fund acquisitions and investments without diluting shareholders. The company also says that "optimizing for developers, as Stripe has from the outset, is in many ways the same thing as optimizing for coding harnesses and for agents." Building economic infrastructure for the internet, Stripe writes, is "mostly the same thing as building the economic infrastructure for AI."

An AI model router for the age of singularity

Stripe also confirmed its acquisition of OpenRouter for more than $8 billion. OpenRouter has built the world's largest and most trusted token-routing engine, supporting all major AI models and providers. Token usage is growing 9 percent per week.

Going forward, every developer will need not just payment infrastructure but also a reliable way to manage their "intelligence pipeline," Stripe says. That's what OpenRouter delivers.

The singularity label makes a convenient excuse

A more skeptical read is that "the singularity" gives Stripe a handy reason to stay private. The company benefits from less regulation, no obligation to disclose financials, and full founder control. Attracting investors doesn't seem to be a problem.

The numbers speak for themselves. Its stock price has risen 31 percent per year since the Series D, beating both the S&P 500 (14 percent) and Nasdaq (18 percent). First-half revenue rose 41 percent year over year, and free cash flow climbed 43 percent, Axios reports. 88 percent of the Forbes AI 50, including OpenAI and Anthropic, use Stripe.

Declaring the singularity is becoming fashionable. The technological singularity is the idea that AI reaches superhuman intelligence and triggers an uncontrollable, self-accelerating cycle of progress. The concept traces back to John von Neumann, who talked in the 1950s about a tipping point beyond which "human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."

Most recently, Demis Hassabis, former head of Google's AI lab DeepMind, said humanity is at the foothills of the singularity. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have made similar claims. Altman already went there last summer, writing about a "gentle singularity" that had started and couldn't be reversed. One way to back up these claims would be AI systems that actually start improving themselves at speed. There are serious doubts that this ability exists yet, though early signs suggest it isn't impossible.

Axios