The payments giant’s founders told investors that the company’s private structure will help it to be more nimble amid AI shifts.

Stripe’s top executives observe a “growing advantage” of remaining a privately held company, they said in a letter to investors last week.

This year marked the start of what Stripe executives called “a large inflection in long-run trends,” fueled by artificial intelligence, wrote John and Patrick Collison, the Irish brothers who co-founded Stripe in 2010 and still lead it.

Being a private company offers “a growing advantage as we venture into the vicissitudes” of this era, they wrote on Wednesday. The letter was also signed by Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s president of technology and business. Patrick Collison is the company’s chief executive and John Collison is its president.

A Stripe spokesperson on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was first reported by Axios, the newsletter publisher.

Stripe sells payment processing software and hardware, subscription services and tools for businesses to operate their finance functions. The company serves about 5 million businesses, including retail giant Amazon; online commerce company Shopify; and Rivian, the electric truck maker.

Stripe wrote the letter to its investors the same day the payments player announced its “largest-ever acquisition” of OpenRouter, a New York-based startup that helps companies direct their AI work needs to various providers and manage their AI spending.

“The world is becoming harder to predict and we expect that deft helmsmanship will be required of every company,” they wrote.

Source link