Stripe’s Annual Letter
3rd March 2025
…we started with ChatGPT, but are now seeing a proliferation of industry specific tools. Some people have called these startups “LLM wrappers”; those people are missing the point. The O ring model in economics shows that in a process with interdependent tasks, the overall output or productivity is limited by the least effective component, not just in terms of cost but in the success of the entire system. In a similar vein, we see these new industry specific AI tools as ensuring that individual industries can properly realize the economic impact of LLMs, and that the contextual, data, and workflow integration will prove enduringly valuable.
Examples in this vein include Abridge, Nabla, and DeepScribe, which are rethinking medical and patient care, while Studeo is reshaping how real estate businesses market property. Architects are using SketchPro to instantly render designs with simple text prompts, restaurants are using Slang.ai to take phone reservations, and property managers are unifying customer support with HostAl. Harvey, whose Al legal assistant is used by many Fortune 500 companies, quadrupled revenue in 2024.