Stripe Powers AI Economy: Infrastructure, Fraud, and Agents
Related Episodes
Analog Power: Reclaim Creativity and Clarity from AI Overwhelm
Analog tools like paper planners foster creativity and clarity by engaging the brain differently than AI, combating digital overwhelm and promoting deeper thinking.
View Episode Notes →
ElevenLabs: Voice AI's Next Frontier and Agile Team Power
## Episode Synopsis This episode delves into the rapid evolution and strategic scaling of Eleven Labs, a company at the forefront of generative...
View Episode Notes →
Specialized AI Clouds Outperform General-Purpose Clouds for GPU Workloads
Specialized "Neo Clouds" like CoreWeave outperform general-purpose clouds by optimizing infrastructure specifically for AI's extreme GPU and data throughput demands.
View Episode Notes →
Agentic AI Dramatically Cuts Software Costs, Increases Demand
Agentic AI tools slash software development costs up to 90%, shifting focus from coding to product clarity and potentially igniting demand, not just savings.
View Episode Notes →
Prioritize Business Value Over Premature Scaling in System Design
Design for the next order of magnitude, not indefinite future, to prevent over-engineering and align resources with actual demand for sustainable growth.
View Episode Notes →
Diverse Pricing Models Tested and Applied for Business Growth
Pricing is less about formulas and more about understanding value and customer psychology, with successful strategies often emerging from experimentation and a deep sense of your audience.
View Episode Notes →Resources
People Mentioned
- Emily Glassberg Sands (Head of Data & AI at Stripe) - Guest on the podcast, discussing Stripe's AI and economic infrastructure.
- Andrew Ng - Mentioned in relation to Coursera's early team.
- Daphne Koller - Mentioned in relation to Coursera's early team.
- Arvin Srinivasan - Quoted on the value of being a "rapper" in product development.
- Dwarkesh Patel - Mentioned as having influenced the idea that agentic commerce could expand spending by high-income individuals.
- Guillermo Rauch - Mentioned for a post about Stripe's integration with Vercel.
- Katie Dill (Head of Design at Stripe) - Praised for her focus on design quality and leadership.
- Tanya Reyes - Mentioned as Stripe's Head of PMM.
Organizations & Institutions
- Stripe - The company where Emily Glassberg Sands works, providing financial infrastructure for the internet.
- OpenAI - Partnered with Stripe on the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
- Forbes - Publishes the "AI 50" list.
- Robin Hood - Mentioned for offering a credit card with free trial cards.
- Shopify - Merchants will be able to sell through ChatGPT via the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
- Salesforce - Announced integration with the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
- Walmart - Signed up to make inventory purchasable through ChatGPT.
- Sam's Club - Signed up to make inventory purchasable through ChatGPT.
- Coursera - Emily Glassberg Sands' previous employer.
- Airbnb - Partnered with Stripe on building the open-source "Kronos" (internally called "Shepherd") feature engineering platform.
- Solana - Mentioned as having sponsored conferences and building a protocol for agents.
- Circle - Mentioned as having sponsored conferences and building a protocol for agents.
- Vercel - Mentioned as an AI dev tool and partner for "claimable sandboxes."
- Replit - Mentioned as an AI dev tool and partner for "claimable sandboxes."
- Yellowstone National Park - Used as an example for mountain goats.
- Stanford University - Where Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller's lab was located.
Tools & Software
- GPT-3.5 - Mentioned as a catalyst for Stripe's investment in LLM-specific experiences.
- Radar - Stripe's machine learning system for blocking fraud.
- Dbt (Data Build Tool) - Mentioned in the context of data engineering.
- Fivetran - Mentioned in the context of data engineering.
- Glean - Mentioned as an internal tool for code search.
- Notion - Mentioned as a tool for organizing information.
- Hubble - Stripe's internal tool for finding, exploring, and querying Stripe data.
- Sigma - Stripe's tool for users to query their business data.
Websites & Online Resources
- Etsy - Mentioned as an initial partner for ChatGPT's instant checkout.
Other Resources
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) - A joint initiative by Stripe and OpenAI to create a shared standard for businesses to interact with AI agents for commerce.
- Token Billing - A Stripe API to track and price inference costs in real time, helping AI companies manage fluctuating LLM costs.
- Free Trial Cards - Offered by Robin Hood, allowing users to sign up for trials without direct credit card charges.
- Stablecoins - A payment method increasingly adopted by AI companies, particularly for global reach and high-value transactions.
- Link (Stripe's consumer product) - Mentioned for its large network and dense user base, especially in AI transactions.
- Claimable Sandboxes - A feature allowing users to set up and test payment integrations within development platforms like Vercel and Replit before going live.
- Rag (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) - A technique discussed in the context of internal information access.
- Tool Shed - Stripe's internal MCP server providing access to various Stripe tools for LLMs and agents.
- Go LLM - An early internal Stripe tool for LLM access.
- Libra Chat - An open-source implementation used by Stripe for LLM access.
- Shepherd / Kronos - An open-source feature engineering platform built in collaboration with Airbnb.
- Tecton - A feature engineering platform evaluated by Stripe.
- Weights & Biases - Mentioned as a company in the evaluation space.
- Flight Kubernetes - Mentioned as part of the basic tech stack.
- Hubert - An internal AI at Stripe that allows natural language querying of business data.
- Semantic Events Infrastructure - A data infrastructure approach Stripe is moving towards.
- Stripe Data Pipeline - A way for users to access Stripe data connected to other data sources.
- BigQuery - A cloud data warehouse mentioned as a destination for Stripe data.
- Tiny Teams - A term for businesses with more revenue than employees, enabled by AI efficiency.