Stripe

Stripe is the company that quietly takes the money when you buy something online. Founded in 2010 by the Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, it gives websites and apps a few lines of code instead of the months of paperwork that used to be needed to accept card payments. It is privately held and one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.

Its AI relevance is recent and deliberate. Stripe bought the usage-metering company Metronome in January 2026 and agreed to acquire the model gateway OpenRouter in August 2026 for a reported figure above 7 billion dollars. The logic is that software calling AI models on its own still has to be counted and invoiced, and Stripe would like to be the one doing the counting.