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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