Stripe CEO says AI startups are growing faster than SaaS ever did and calling them wrappers ‘misses the point’

In its annual letter released Thursday, payments giant Stripe declared that it was “seeing an AI boom” with its data revealing that artificial intelligence startups are growing more rapidly than traditional SaaS companies have historically. In a chart, Stripe showed that the top 100 AI companies (by revenue) were able to achieve $5 million in annualized revenue in 24 months in 2024 compared to the top 100 SaaS companies taking 37 months in 2018 to reach the same milestone. “Our 2024 data shows these startups are building businesses at record pace,” wrote Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison. Specifically, Collison pointed to AI-powered coding assistant Cursor exceeding $100 million in revenue, Lovable hitting $17 million in ARR “in just 3 months,” and Bolt achieving $20 million in ARR in two months’ time as examples of this AI boom. “Much as SaaS started horizontal and then went vertical (first Salesforce and then Toast), we’re seeing a similar dynamic playing out in AI: we s ... Read full article.