Stripe Is Building the Toll Road for the Machine Economy

Most Americans know Stripe as the checkout box on a website. That picture is five years out of date.
Stripe reports that businesses on its platform generated $1.9 trillion in total volume in 2025, up 34 percent in a single year. By the company’s own reckoning, that is roughly 1.6 percent of global GDP. It claims 90 percent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 80 percent of the Nasdaq 100 as customers.
A private company, owned by insiders and venture funds and answerable to no public sha