Stripe told investors on Wednesday that Jan. 1 marked the beginning of the singularity. The evidence offered was a large inflection in long-run trends, with a sharp rise in the rate of new firm creation as the primary example. Census Bureau figures published a week earlier put July business applications at 578,926, up 8.1% from June, while projected formations of employer businesses from that same cohort rose 0.7%, to 29,959.

First-half revenue rose 41% year over year and free cash flow rose 43%. Stripe said 88% of the Forbes AI 50, including OpenAI and Anthropic, build on its platform, and that revenue share from AI and crypto customers more than doubled. Cofounders Patrick and John Collison signed the letter alongside William Gaybrick, president of technology and business.

In February, Patrick Collison told TBPN there was a reasonable chance Q1 2026 would be remembered as the first quarter of the singularity, adding that in hindsight the claim might look completely delusional. At Stripe’s April conference, he........

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