The a16z Show
John and Patrick Collison on Stripe's Growth, Agent Commerce, and the Future of Software
28 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What recent announcements did Stripe make regarding employee engagement?
the world is going to need platforms that support billions of transactions per second billions of transactions per second which no payment rail or platform does today where we think things will go is just there will be a huge amount of agentic commerce and again we're seeing a little bit of it today we think there'll be a torrent of it and that is what unites stablecoins and ai because we think
you're going to need blockchains and better blockchains. Up until now, the economics of software have been conceived of as fixed cost and then infinitely monetized or monetized as much as possible. That has these kind of winner-take-all dynamics. But once there are inference costs and custom creation involved, it really shifts.
Finally, one executive who said, oh yeah, we started, you know, augmenting our customer service with AI so people are more productive, but we're just going to go back to doing it the old-fashioned way.
Stripe processed more than a trillion dollars in payments last year. It grew 34%. And according to Patrick Collison, 2026 Q1 may be looked back on as the first quarter of the singularity. That's not a marketing line.
Chapter 2: How is Stripe's growth impacting the economy?
It's what the data is showing. The 2025 cohort of businesses on Stripe is larger and performing better on a per business basis than any prior cohort. And the trend is accelerating. In this conversation recorded live on TVPN, John and Patrick Cullison walk through what they're actually seeing in the real economy.
why agentic commerce will require blockchains capable of billions of transactions per second, and a reframe on software itself, from mass-produced product to something bespoke, cooked fresh at the moment of use, like pizza. This conversation originally aired on TBPN, hosted by John Coogan and Georgie Hayes.
We have John Patrick Collison from Stripe. How are you guys doing? What's going on? Greetings.
Chapter 3: What is agent commerce and why is it significant?
Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. This is huge. I went through YC. You guys were massively influential in my career, and it's a joy to speak to you today on such a big day. But I'd love for you to kick it off with the actual news. What happened? Why are we talking today?
We had two announcements today. One is we're launching a tender offer for employees and that and kind of the valuation, everything tended to get a bunch of the headlines.
Chapter 4: What role do stablecoins play in the future of commerce?
The thing that was honestly more work was we released our annual letter where every year we sum up all the trends that we're seeing on Stripe. And Stripe is growing a lot. We grew at 34% last year because the businesses on Stripe are growing a lot and there's just... As you guys know, there's a lot happening in tech right now. This is why we need TVBN.
This is why we need a nonstop stream of everything going on, because there is so much happening. Yeah, we'll move to 24 hours eventually.
Eventually, eventually. I mean, but I feel like there is a ton of AI noise and stories and drama, and we are, you know, never running out of stuff to talk about. But what are you actually seeing in the data?
Chapter 5: How is AI influencing the dynamics of software development?
Because there's always this disconnect between the market and the real economy. Like, People are still shopping in retail stores occasionally. Where is AI actually moving the needle?
Well, generally speaking, I would say from the Stripe data, it looks like the economy is in pretty good shape. And there's been, to say the least, there's been some degree of volatility in markets over the last two years and all sorts of different events and deep-seek moments and what have you.
But if you look at the actual real economy time series, if you look at what's actually happening substantively over the last two years, it's always hard to prognosticate the future, but over the last two years, things really seem to be in good shape. The thing that's really catching our attention... One second, because I'm just curious.
Have you guys tried to think about maybe the businesses are doing well on Stripe because they're forward-looking, extremely tapped in, working on the right things? And if you look at a bunch of legacy providers, you would see that actually there are a bunch of businesses out there that are
Chapter 6: What historical technologies contributed to the growth of internet payments?
slowing down that maybe are feeling effective just overall consumer spending. Like, have you tried to kind of like break that out or understand that dynamic? It's obviously hard to measure because we don't have that data, we only have our data. But I think there is some of that composition effect.
And we see it, I guess, both in Stripe's data compared to, say, public earnings from others, like clearly the respective populations are performing somewhat differently. But I guess we also see it qualitatively in the conversations we're having with customers, where what tends to happen, say, for some incumbent is,
they built some business, they installed some system long before Stripe even existed. Maybe there's some sense that, well, if it's not broken, don't fix it. But then decide, hey, we're going to do something new.
And when they're doing something new, then they want to use the best infrastructure that will enable them to move the fastest and launch the most countries and support stable coins and do things with AI and whatever.
Chapter 7: What are the challenges and opportunities in agentic commerce?
And then they tend to launch that on Stripe. And so there is this qualitative sense that once a company decides to do something innovative, new, retool, what have you, they're more likely to come straight.
Are you seeing overlap between stablecoin activity and AI activity? There's been sort of a new narrative around agents will use stablecoins, but I feel like agents can use legacy payment rails just fine. And then also you can do really cool things with stablecoins that are not really AI native necessarily. And so I'm wondering how much overlap there is there.
I would distinguish between how things work today and how things will work in the future. In terms of how things work today, agents absolutely can. A lot of people build with Stripe.
Chapter 8: How will the economics of software evolve in the future?
You can have a one-time use credit card that your agent can go out and spend. But if you look at what's happening, there's lots of agents having to solve CAPTCHAs,
you know be able to kind of do stuff on the wider web clearly the web is not built for agents and as a result they have to get creative to actually do any real world tasks and that's true in the kind of economic activity as well where we think things will go is just there will be a huge amount of agentic commerce and again we're seeing a little bit of it today we think there'll be a
torrent of it. And that is what unites stablecoins and AI, because we think you're going to need blockchains and better blockchains, honestly. I mean, this is what this was our thinking behind incubating Tempo, because you're going to need really high throughput blockchains for the agents.
Can you take us through some of the historical technologies that led to growth in just internet payments? I'm thinking about mobile, social commerce, one-click checkout, Apple Pay. There's so many things when I think about the agentic commerce boom that's coming.
It could be hooking a better version of Siri up and, you know, ChatGPT rolling this out very aggressively, but also, you know, smart speakers, smart lamps, like your watch. Like there's so many different pieces to unblock and unhobble the actual agents as they go about their day. Well, can I answer a slightly different question?
I don't know if we can come back to that. Yeah, go ahead. A point I just, sorry, this is a- We'll tell you the questions, you tell us your answers. So you know how brothers are. So I just want to lose one point for the prior question about what we're seeing in the economy, because I feel like, I mean, this is very arbitrary, obviously, but I feel like there's at least a reasonable chance
that 2026 Q1 will be looked back upon as the first quarter of the singularity. Maybe in three years, in hindsight, that will look completely delusional. I don't know. But we're seeing, I mean, there's kind of the macroscopic picture, the Stripe user base and things overall looking pretty good and so forth, and the tumult's not quite showing up.
But when we look at the cohorts, and then when we look at the businesses that signed up in 2023, and they're progression and trajectory over the subsequent months, the businesses that signed up in 2024, and then the business signed up in 2025. There's been a phase transition in 2025, where there are both more of them, and on a per business basis, they are on average doing better.
Which is really striking, because you might think, okay, well, there's this cavalcade of new lightweight vibe coded applications or something, but you know, that's not really a lot of substance there. We're actually seeing both numbers move together. There are many more businesses getting started and the average, the median business is in fact performing better.
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