As the financial services platform for 78% of the Forbes AI 50*—including companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Midjourney, and Cohere—Stripe is well positioned to see how rapidly AI startups are turning demand into revenue. To better understand this dynamic, we analyzed payment data from the top 100 AI companies on our platform. We’ve observed three key trends shaping the rapid growth of the AI economy:
- AI startups are hitting important revenue milestones much faster than previous generations of tech startups, including SaaS.
- AI companies are expanding internationally right from the start, quickly becoming global businesses.
- Innovative business models and monetization strategies are emerging quickly, driving accelerated revenue growth and adoption.
Behind these trends are innovative startups—many already household names, others on their way—that are reshaping entire industries. Healthcare companies such as Abridge, Nabla, and DeepScribe are redefining patient care, while Studeo is transforming how real estate is marketed. Restaurants are using Slang.ai to streamline reservations, architects rely on SketchPro for instant design visualization, and property managers simplify customer support with HostAI. Harvey, whose AI-powered legal assistant is used by numerous Fortune 500 companies, quadrupled its revenue in 2024 alone.
The accelerating adoption and monetization of AI has created a powerful cycle of investment, innovation, and global expansion. In this report, we share insights into how quickly AI businesses are growing and monetizing and offer a glimpse into the future direction of the AI economy—including the rise of vertical specialization and agentic commerce.
Revenue growth is rapid and accelerating
AI companies are reaching revenue milestones faster than previous generations of startups. The top 100 AI companies on Stripe achieved annualized revenues of $1 million in a median period of just 11.5 months—four months ahead of the fastest-growing SaaS companies. The revenue growth reflects surging demand: the portion of companies worldwide that use AI rose from 55% in 2023 to 72% in 2024, and the percentage of companies using generative AI more than doubled. As of August 2024, adoption of AI by US individuals roughly doubled the adoption rates of PCs and the internet at comparable points in their development.
Just over half (55) of the top 100 AI companies on Stripe were founded prior to 2020, and the remaining 45 were founded between 2020 and 2023. During its first year in operation, the median company in the newer group generated more than seven times the revenue the median company in the older group had during its first year. Partly as a result, younger AI companies reached major revenue milestones about three times faster than older ones did.
Case studies in revenue growth
Several of the fastest-growing AI companies on Stripe are making software development significantly easier and more accessible, empowering users to quickly turn ideas into fully functioning applications.
- Cursor, the AI-powered coding assistant, raced to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just three years.
- Lovable, which makes it easy to build high-quality software without writing code, achieved $17 million in annual recurring revenue in just three months.
- Bolt—which lets users prompt, run, edit, and deploy full-stack web and mobile apps—hit $20 million in annual recurring revenue in just two months.
To learn more, download the full report.
*Stripe is used by all of the businesses in the AI 50 that are selling a product online. Eleven of them don’t yet do so.