# Inside the AI economy: What Stripe’s data reveals — Arielle Le Bail — session 2026-09-24T09:30:00.000Z → 2026-09-24T10:00:00.000Z _78 transcript lines · 49 slides_ ## Transcript Hello. Welcome back. Alright. Let's get it for you guys. Okay. So, so far, we have spoken about, you know, the AI Like we talked about harnesses, software factories. We talked about generative media. And all those tools are for you guys to build agents, to build applications that use AI. Who who here built actually with AI? Okay. Yeah. Most of you guys do. Right? And the purpose of that is to create value to for people. Right? Whatever agent you're building, whatever tool you're making, ultimately is to bring value to your users. The next speaker is actually deep into, the the the data, and, she works at Stripe. And what they see is that the entire economy is changing, thanks to AI. And, she's going to come to to tell us about and give us some insights about what Stripe what Stripe's data is revealing about AI. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming to the stage the head of a product of AI and Startups. Ariel Lubai. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I'm super happy to be here, and I hope I will get some slides at some point on the screen. Can I get the slides in the, please? Okay. Perfect. Okay. Let's come back there. Okay. Perfect. So yeah. Really happy to be here. So at Stripe, we work with the fastest AI growing companies. We we have this luck, and many of them are We're actually in this room. So really happy to be here. And we have a front row seat of what's working, what's not, and, like, how the best companies scale today in this new world of AI. So today, I want to share some of those insights with you guys and, you know, have some thoughts on the playbook because this has been completely rewritten in the past few years and even months. So first, like, let's start with, figures. Sorry. First, we are working with, 1.6%, of, of the GDP globally that is processed by Stripe, and that is really something that puts us in that front row seat. At the five patterns that we're seeing, when the top AI companies build faster, I think this is something we're all feeling. Two, they sell globally by default. When you're building today, your day one market is now the whole world. Three, pricing is evolving completely. Like, there are a lot of workshops on pricing today, by the way, because how you price has completely changed in the past few years. And four, they adapt their go to market motions as well. We have, like, channel sales that are becoming increasingly important. We'll dig into that afterwards. And five, they monitor fraud early and often. Why? Because, like, what's creating potentially viral growth with Tripling in a single year. That growth isn't slowing down. It's actually accelerating today. And the top ones that you know are even more mind blowing, of course, like Lovable, they reported a 100,000,000 in eight months. Eight months later, they were actually at 400,000,000. Anthropic, that you all know, started in January 23 with zero and went to, to 1,000,000,000 in in just two years. And now They're at 30,000,000,000. So that's just completely mind blowing. And this isn't just b two b. Like, we saw this in in our linked data. Like, consumer adoption is also increasing a lot. Like, it doubled just from 6,000,000 to over 14,000,000 just in one year. Consumers are also spending more. What's actually interesting is that they're spending more on AI tools. Like, today, we're around, like, $360. Per person per month on AI, which is basically doubled what it was three months ago. It was around a $180. And this is basically, like, basically what the average European spends for, like, phone service, Internet, and streaming services combined. Like, people aren't treating AI today like some streaming service that you can cancel, but they're treating that like a critical utility that they Absolutely need. So what's behind all this? We're going to deep dive into these different patterns starting with speed. So just like you no longer did months of engineering to, you know, Vibe code and accept the payments, now you no longer need month of engineering to ship software. So what's actually interesting is that this chart shows when it clicked. Like, if you take a look at iOS app releases, They were actually declining at the end of, '24, and then the agentic codec tools hit. And so this is where we saw the iOS app launches just grow again and not like small, grow by 24% month over month. And so now, even like now that we embed payments into developer platforms like Lovable, Ripple, Vercel, etcetera, it's actually even Faster to go from your idea to first charge, like, even faster. So what you can see here is that it's actually taking less than six weeks from first idea and, like, sandbox to your first charge. Like, only six weeks. That's really crazy. And that strategy is faster for technical folks. So I've played a bit with a prompt to show you how it looks like today to build with Cloud and Stripe, because we've we've made a lot of work to make sure that we have an agentic developer experience that enables you to build without having, to leave where you're building and having to go on Stripe dashboard and and build stuff. So, let's say you are a developer today and that you've built an app, and now you're ready to set to set up payments. So let's jump into call and see what it looks like. So I have My prompt here where I've asked, you know, to set up payments. I want, invoicing and subscription. And so yeah. Okay. So here, you can see that Claude correctly recommends Stripe, which is, of course, what we want, and that they will be more powerful because they are connecting to Stripe MCP and the skills that we created with this. So Claude uses the Stripe integration recommender, MCP tool along with those skills. To know what to use and what to ask to the user. So it's basically asking, like, where are your customers located? The reason it's asking is because, like, Claude knows now that they need to have this answer to provide the best recommendation for the integration. What's interesting is that they recommend checkout, which is a Stripe integration, and not, like, Card Element, for example, because it knows that for For a for a better subscription integration, we need checkout. So that's, again, like, showing that, it knows the right thing. So then I responded, like, my customers are split between The US and The EU, with a particular concentration in Ireland. So what's interesting now is that I get feedback on the type of tax knowledge I need to have. So, basically, I need to know that digital subscriptions, are taxable here. And it's actually interesting because it it it recommends me to use Stripe Tax, because I don't want to have to know all the regional tax rules for all the countries that I'm going to launch to. And so Stripe Tax is going to help me without, without having to know those rules. I can see that it's provisioning a Stripe sandbox for me. What's actually interesting is that you don't have to, you know, go outside of the flow here. To to get a sandbox. The agent uses a new CLI command to create the sandbox without needing any Stripe credentials, which was not the case before. And the command also fetches the API keys and securely stores them. And that way, I basically don't have to break my flow, and I can build my integration, like, without having to to go away. And so with the key store sorted, I can see that now Claude is Checking all the different skills, that we, Stripe, provide to make sure that they're, it's building the right thing. So it's saying that it has everything it needs, and it's asking me, like, just do do you want to proceed with MCP Stripe create product and and if I want to continue with that and create my checkout. So I'm pressing yes here, and we're going to fast forward and try to see the checkout. So this is What it looks like. I'm going to test if the checkout works properly. And so, yeah, that's how, it would look like. Okay. So it's done. Like, Strap and Cloud are basically making it easy for you to for you and, like, all the developers to build, set up payments, and start monetizing without going away from your building interface. So what does this mean for you? Like, many of you are probably already doing this, but I want to reemphasize that, you know, in the playbook today, it's really important to obsess over developer productivity. Like, the best companies today are really working on speed and just making sure that they completely collapse build times. Second, like build, sell, and iterate at the same time, the linear playbook that we had before, like you build your product. Then you go find your customers isn't just working anymore because of of the fact that too many people are building at the same time. So you basically need to do all three at the same time, in parallel. And then on the build versus buy question, we're actually quite convinced from what we're seeing that the best companies do both. Like, they built what's making them differentiated, and they actually also buy You know, the infrastructure and building blocks that they need for their product. So, two, like, getting to market is one thing, but it is also a big question of, like, where am I going to sell and how am I going to get those customers abroad. So the data confirms it completely. A few years ago, the fastest growing SaaS companies were basically reaching 25 countries in year one and fifty one by year three. And today, the top AI companies, they're already at 42 countries in year one and at a 120 countries in year three. So this is like what I was saying about, like, day one market is basically the whole world. Like, it's not about having a presence in in those countries. It's actually getting revenue, from these countries from day one. So GAMMA is a great example. You probably know them. Like, they're based in SF, it's an AI powered, like, slides and website builder. And they reported a 100,000,000 in revenue in year, in year one. And the majority of their revenue comes from outside The US. So that's definitely showing how the trend is going. And today, if you take a look at overall, like all the top AI companies, 48% of their revenue comes from outside their Market. Like, nearly half of a dollar that you get or a euro is actually from a foreign country. And this figure was actually 33%, a few months ago. So let's take a look at which markets are actually spending a lot on AI tools. So not surprisingly, we can see that the countries with the high GDP growth are here. So you can see France, The UK, South Korea. But we So have, like, new emerging countries that are spending a lot on AI. So for example, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, and the demand is there. So now, as you're building your company, you need to think about, like, like, how am I going to get that demand? How am I going to get those customers? And, like, what we're seeing what we're seeing is that you really need to meet buyers' expectations and meet them where they are. So The way we're doing this is that you offer local currencies and local payment methods. That sounds easy, and that is actually easy, to do with Stripe. But, like, basically, it's really meeting them where they are and with their habits. So localized pricing, for example, it sounds like, completely simple, but basically it increases 18% higher cross border revenue. Like, it's crazy the impact that it has. And basically when you add one Just one local payment method for a country, you have at least 7% conversion uplift, in this country. So three checks to pressure test your global readiness as an AI company today. First, you localize your prices and your payment methods. Two, automate tax collection because, like, no one wants to get in trouble either. And three, track performance by country like performance Conversion and obsess over optimizing those. So now pricing. Because the old models are are not working anymore, now we have to think about, like, new pricing models. The interesting thing is that, like, value is elastic. You probably know that if you've taken a look a bit at pricing. And so everyone might be using the same AI tool, but they might not using the same way. So take two users. One is an engineer. They're going to bed. Next day, they're having a code review, and the output is really engineering output. The other user is just an everyday user. They replace Safari by Chargebee, and the output is just an upgraded search experience. So for this, like, the cost is not the same, the value is not the same, and so the pricing should definitely not be the same. So this change in value isn't new. We had this with all the technology shifts that happened. Like, for example, we had local host hosting at a time, so it was normal to download the software for a yearly license. Then cloud computing arrived, and so we had auto updates of softwares. So it was actually, normal to move to subscriptions. And today, like, what do we have with AI? So that's basically where you'd expect me to tell you what the the the best answer is. So good news, bad news. Bad news first, we it's still early. Like, we don't have a gold standard of what all companies are doing, and it is absolutely the best. But good news is that we're clearly seeing, emerging a pattern. Take Ripple, for example. Polk's too hard. See today, a developer tools company that you probably know that's been around for around a decade, basically. And when AI tools arrived, they pivoted their product. They started adding AI, AI tools, AI features in the product, and they also started to adapt the pricing, like layering credits, etcetera. So they started with flat subscriptions, which is how you stick and create the relationship with User and then added credits as AI became core to the value of the product. So the result is that today, they're targeting 1,000,000,000 ARR, this year, And they're not the only ones to do this. This is just one of the examples of what we can see. So today, we have, like, two out of three companies of the Forbes AI 50, listing that are using usage based pricing. So a majority of these companies are actually using a hybrid model. They're using subscriptions still for the stickiness of the relationship, but they're adding a lot of usage based pricing to make sure that the value is actually reflected in the pricing. So it's good to know that you have to do some form of usage based pricing, but getting it right is actually another story. So in our view, there are three things you need. To do to add, to your playbook for pricing. First, price in your customer's language, like developer think in tokens, enterprises, most of the time think in seats. Like, you have to think about these. Like, who are your customers? And make sure that you match their pricing with the way that they experience value in your product. Second, you wanna show, like, as close as real time visibility on what They are consuming. Because, like, you know, this is this is not a nice to have, and this is basically how you prevent churn as a company. Like, this means finding ways to make sure they're seeing real time what they're consuming. And three, we really see that it's strong to sell credits and not costs. Because, like, at one point, your customers will exchange money for credits, but then the way they will interact with your products will not Be with, like, each euro or each cent. It will be with credits, and it will be related to value mostly, not costs. So now we're going into go to market motions changing, which is also a big part even if, like, a lot of people are actually taking that bit of the side. But that's actually a big motion changing as well. Actually, entirely new motions are emerging. You might have seen that. And The biggest one is channel sales. Like, it means where your product is going to be to be sold and how. And, like, today in the AI go to market motion, for example, a lot of companies are actually buying OpenAI or Anthropic via their cloud provider. So you need to think about these different channel sales that are arriving. And a lot of AI companies are actually building their own marketplaces where you are going to be able to Reference and to be to be bought as well. And, of course, like, the billion or maybe trillion dollar question, like, how do you sell your products to your newest buyer, which is, you know, the agent. Like, we've spent decades thinking about what is the best way, you know, human psychology. I will price my product €999 and not €10. But, like, agents absolutely don't care about any of this. And today, I think this chart is one of the clearest signal of, like, I need to think about my agent as a buyer because, like, for example, this is Stripe docs, so our public documentation. The pink line is, how it's read by the agent and the purple line is by humans. And as you can see, like this very summer in '26, we had the two lines crossed, which means that our public documentation today is more read by Agents done by humans. So we we leave it every day at Stripe. Like, we have to think about, okay, how is my product? How is my documentation read and understood by agents? So you have to change the way you you do things. You have to change the way you are going to showcase your products and make them discoverable by agents. And go to market is, like, the tip of the iceberg because if you think about, like, changing channel motions, then And you also think about, like, adapting your product to that, making sure that your onboarding is going to reflect that new onboarding motion. Pricing and revenue, of course, is going to have to reflect that as well, your organization. So, for example, if you have enterprise sales, you are going to have to adapt this to the new new go to market motions as well. So this is how I would think about the playbook. Like, basically, today, the products are Channel agnostic, and the customers themselves are channel agnostic. They don't really care about where they buy. So they may be self serve at some at some point, graduate to enterprise, and then, like, have an agent implement a new product. So you need to think about all of this journey, for your product. So have a clear graduation product progress from product led growth to sales led growth. Then make sure that you have Unified system. You have, like, one product catalog that you have, one customer object, one data model, and that you don't go away in in all directions. And third, like, as I was saying, please design for agent readiness. Like, make sure that your product is ready to be discovered and bought by agents without a human in the loop. Okay. So last pattern, fraud. This is actually something very important that you need to Think about monitor fraud, and risk, like, early and often. So what makes it hard, basically, is that, like, it doesn't show up in one place. Like, at all at all time of your product life cycle, they're going to be a potential for an attack. So if you think about account creation, payment method added, payment processing, and then after that, like, post usage, all of these places are potential, places for fraud. So let's take first, like, sign up, top of the funnel. The thing is you're going to have someone that... Like a bad actor that signs up again and again, and so they're basically just stealing all of your new user credits at once. One in six sign ups, to give you an idea, today, involves multi accounts abuse. So they're basically farming you free trial. Without your ever seeing a dollar from them. And the problem also is that JNI today has made it very hard to, you know, find fake accounts because they actually look real. And what's interesting is that multi account abuse is often like exactly how free trial abuse happens at scale. So you can see that it increases dramatically. Like, this is how it accelerated in the straight network. ## Slides ### 00:03:50 # AI Engineer Paris ORGANIZED BY - Mistral SPONSORED BY - Daytona - cominty - langfuse by ClickHouse - descope - Modal - Latitude - neo4j - MAKORA - Qdrant - Fivetran [Wireframe globe graphic with logos of the organizer and sponsors] ### 00:04:20 # Tomáš Barczi AI TECHNOLOGY LEAD SKODA [SKODA logo] ### 00:04:49 # Clemens Rawert ## CO-FOUNDER langfuse ### 00:05:24 - Backblaze - AI Engineer Paris - Notion - Sonar - Mistral - AI Engineer Paris - Mistral - Sonar - Ocaml [ ### 00:05:49 - AI Engineer PARIS - Notion - Mistral - langfuse by ClickHouse - NVIDIA - misty [Slide displaying a grid of company logos and names] ### 00:06:23 # Arielle Le Bail ## Head of Product, AI & Startups - EMEA ### AI Engineer PARIS Organized by Mistral STATION F September 23-24 [Mistral logo] [Stripe logo] ### 00:06:48 # The top AI companies... ### 00:07:22 ## Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI-powering the next era of commerce. - **1.6%** of global GDP processed annually - **50%** of the Fortune 100 and millions of businesses use Stripe - **86%** of the Forbes AI 50 build on Stripe [Logos of companies that use Stripe, including Meta, Valero, Alphabet, Pepsico, GM, Comcast, Microsoft, Ford, Walgreens, OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, ElevenLabs, Cursor, Runway, KeyGen, Perplexity, and Lovable.] ### 00:07:51 # Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI—powering the next era of commerce. - **1.6%** of global GDP processed annually - **50%** of the Fortune 100 and millions of businesses use Stripe - **86%** of the Fortune 50 build on Stripe [List of company logos including Meta, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Valero, GM, Ford, Alphabet, Comcast, Walgreens, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, HeyGen, Anthropic, Cursor, Perplexity, Replit, Runway, and Lovable] ### 00:08:20 ## The top AI companies... - Build faster - Sell globally by default - Price for the AI economy ### 00:09:18 # And the top is growing even faster. **Lovable** $0 to $400M ARR in **16 months** Source: TechCrunch **ANTHROP\C** $0 to $30B run rate in **3 years** Source: Anthropic [Screenshot of an app interface with the text "Build something Lovable"] [Screenshot of an app interface with the text "Evening, Maia"] ### 00:09:49 ### 2.3x YoY growth in paying AI customers - 5.9M monthly customers (January 2025) - 13.8M monthly customers (January 2026) [Bar chart showing growth in monthly customers from 5.9M in January 2025 to 13.8M in January 2026] ### 00:10:20 # $359 per month spent by top 10% of Link buyers - ElevenLabs - Genspark - CURSOR - OpenRouter - XI - KIMI ### 00:10:50 # New iOS apps surged after agentic coding became available iOS apps released each month, YoY change by trailing 12 months (TTM) Source: Sensor Tower and Wells Fargo Securities, with analysis by a16z [Line graph showing the year-over-year change in iOS app releases from July 2022 to January 2026. The percentage hovers around 0% to -5% until early 2025, marked by a dashed line as "Release of agentic coding," after which it rapidly increases to 24% by January 2026.] ### 00:11:17 # New iOS apps surged after agentic coding became available iOS apps released each month, YoY change by trailing 12 months (TTM) Source: Sensor Tower and Wells Fargo Securities, with analysis by a16z [Line graph showing the year-over-year change in iOS app releases from July '22 to January '26. The line hovers around 0% to -5% until early 2025, then sharply increases after a vertical dashed line marked "Release of agentic coding," reaching 24% by January '26.] ### 00:11:49 # Founders build and monetize faster with AI developer platforms Time to first charge, by monthly sandbox creation cohort * <6 weeks from sandbox to first charge * 4X higher first charge rate compared to 6 months ago [Line graph showing time to first charge by monthly sandbox creation cohort, with lines for Feb 2026, Jan 2026, Dec 2025, Nov 2025, and Oct 2025] ### 00:12:20 # Vibe Check ## Offensive Security Consultancy Penetration testing, threat modeling, and vulnerability research. 15+ years of breaking things so you can build them right. - ** ### 00:12:53 # Thinking > - Great overview. Before I start building, one quick question: **where are your customers located?** Primarily US, or do you have global clients? That'll help me ### 00:13:21 # Thinking - Great overview. Before I start building, one quick question: **where are your customers located?** Primarily US, or do you have global clients? That'll help ### 00:13:52 ### AI Engineer Paris Organized by Mistral - no card entry on your site at all. This is a clean split: subscriptions for the newsletter (Checkout handles the recurring billing complexity ### 00:14:21 ### AI Assistant conversation about Stripe integration and VAT - This is a clean split: subscriptions for the newsletter (Checkout handles the recurring billing complexity), invoicing for the one-off fee (matches the "professional ### 00:14:52 ### Conferences - Presented at DEF CON, Black Hat, - and SANS ICS Summit. - ...presented findings to our board ### AI Assistant Interaction - Ireland/EU means VAT is ### 00:15:17 - Sandbox is wired up. Now let me load Stripe best practices guidance before building. - `stripe-best-practices` skill - Thought for 2s > [Screenshot of a dark-themed terminal or AI assistant interface displaying text output] ### 00:15:56 # Debugging Stripe Checkout Session Issues ## The Checkout Session redirect isn't working, please debug! ### Check for latest error after price fix ```bash grep 'StripeInvalidRequest ### 00:16:16 ### Checklist #1: Build Faster - Obsess over developer productivity. - Build, sell, and iterate at the same time. - Build *and* buy. ### 00:16:44 ### Checklist #1: Build Faster - Obsess over developer productivity. - Build, sell, and iterate at the same time. - Build *and buy*. ### 00:17:21 ### The top AI companies... - Build faster - **Sell globally by default** - Price for the AI economy - Adapt go-to-market motions - Monitor fraud risk early and often ### 00:17:45 # Global expansion: SaaS vs. AI companies on Stripe Median number of foreign countries sold into, on Stripe - Top 100 SaaS companies - Top 100 AI companies (2025) [Bar chart comparing the median number of foreign countries sold into by Top 100 SaaS companies and Top 100 AI companies (2025) over three years after going live on Stripe.] ### 00:18:21 # GAMMA Gamma is based in SF—yet most of its $100M+ business is from outside the US. - 70 million customers - $100 million in annual revenue - Profitable since 2023 Source: NYT, Nov '25, & Stripe blog post, Jan '26 [Image of three men sitting at a table] ### 00:18:52 ### 48% of 2025 revenue came from outside the home country ### 00:19:21 # Global AI Spend and Emerging Hotspots - **Top AI spend** - Canada - United States - UK - Germany - France - Italy - Brazil - Japan - South Korea - Australia - **Emerging hotspot** - Mexico - Switzerland - Poland - Turkey - India - Israel - UAE [World map showing countries categorized as "Top AI spend" (pink outline) or "Emerging hotspot" (purple outline)] ### 00:20:26 ### Checklist #2: Sell globally by default - Localize prices and payment methods. - Automate tax collection. - Track performance by country. ### 00:20:54 # The top AI companies... - Build faster - Sell globally by default - **Price for the AI economy** - Adapt go-to-market motions - Monitor fraud risk early and often ### 00:21:20 # Power [Large number 7 inside a purple circle] ### 00:21:50 ### New tech developments change value and force pricing shifts. - On-prem software [Icon of a desktop monitor] ### 00:22:18 ### New tech developments change value and force pricing shifts. - On-prem software - Cloud computing - AI [Three icons: a desktop computer for on-prem software, a cloud for cloud computing, and a sparkling star for AI.] ### 00:22:56 # Replit's pricing model evolution: From pure subscriptions to hybrid pricing [Screenshot of the Replit website showing a "What will you build?" prompt for AI-assisted project creation, with options like Website, Mobile, Design, Slides, Animation, ### 00:23:19 ### Describe your idea, Replit will bring it to life... [Screenshot of the Replit AI tool interface] ### 00:23:50 # ...form of usage-ba... ### 00:24:21 ### Checklist #3: Price for the AI economy - Price in your customers' language. - Give customers real-time spend visibility. - Use credits to shift mindset from cost to value. ### 00:25:25 # Adapt go... # Monitor fr... ### 00:25:49 # There are also new monetization motions emerging, faster than ever. - PLG - SLG - Marketplace - Agents as buyers [Icon of two overlapping windows for PLG] [Icon of two hands shaking for SLG] [Icon of a storefront for Marketplace] [Icon of a sparkling star for Agents as buyers] ### 00:26:21 # There are also new monetization motions emerging, faster than ever. - PLG - SLG - Marketplace - Agents as buyers [Icon of three overlapping windows for PLG] [Icon of a handshake for SLG] [Icon of a storefront for Marketplace] [Icon of two stars for Agents as buyers] ### 00:26:49 # Agents are on track to read more Stripe Docs than humans by the end of 2026 ## Stripe Docs page views [Line graph showing two trends: "Human" page views (purple line) starting high and generally declining, and "AI" page views (pink line) starting low and generally increasing, with the AI line projected to surpass the Human line by early 2026.] ### 00:27:23 AI 2024 Jul 2024 [Line graph with a purple wavy line and a dashed line above it, showing a trend over time with markers for 2024 and July 2024, possibly related to AI] ### 00:27:50 # The hidden side of monetization Monetization is more than just your go-to-market motion. [Iceberg diagram illustrating monetization, with "GTM motion" visible above the waterline, and "Product", "Pricing and revenue", "Organization", and "Business model" hidden below the waterline.] ### 00:28:20 ### Checklist #4: Adapt GTM motions - Articulate PLG to SLG graduation. - Build unified business systems. - Design for agents as buyers. ### 00:29:21 # Tokens are the new currency - Account creation - Payment method added - Payment processing - Post usage [Circular diagram illustrating a four-step process: Account creation, Payment method added, Payment processing, and Post usage, connected by arrows in a clockwise flow.] ### 00:29:45 # Multi-account abuse Sign up [Illustration of a user icon connected to a stack of "Sign up" buttons, suggesting multiple account creation]