OpenAI chooses Stripe to power payments for ChatGPT Plus and DALL·E

Financial infrastructure platform Stripe has been chosen by OpenAI to power payments for ChatGPT Plus and DALL·E, and will also incorporate OpenAI’s new natural language technology, GPT-4, into its products and services.

At the same time, Stripe has announced a Series I fundraise of $6.5 billion, with the new capital to be used for employee liquidity, rather than to fund the business.

Peter Welinder, vice president of product and partnerships at OpenAI, said Stripe will help monetize its flagship products.

Using Stripe’s products, OpenAI was able to launch a global payments system for multiple product lines “in a matter of weeks”.

“Beyond payments, Stripe is helping us with everything from recurring billing and tax compliance, to automating our financial operations,” he added.

Through the collaboration, Stripe Billing and Stripe Checkout are powering ChatGPT Plus, which is OpenAI’s premium subscription offering of ChatGPT, to be able to offer different types of subscriptions.

Stripe’s Link allows OpenAI users to pay, on average, 40% faster by auto-filling saved payment details, while OpenAI is using Stripe Tax to enable it to meet its tax compliance obligations as it expands its global reach.

OpenAI joins other AI companies Runway, Diagram and Moonbeam who have also signed up to work with Stripe.

“As these new AI companies proliferate, we’re helping them with smart monetization strategies that get their products into more hands,” said David Singleton, chief technology officer at Stripe.

Stripe CTO David Singleton

The integration of GPT-4 into its products and services builds on Stripe’s work, last year, with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI team to implement GPT-3 for Stripe Support.

Stripe joined the GPT-4 beta in January this year, and has since outputted GPT-powered Stripe Docs.

Eugene Mann, product lead for applied machine learning at Stripe, added: “Like the introduction of email, smartphones, or videoconferencing, GPT-4 has the potential to fundamentally rewire – and improve – how businesses run.”

Meanwhile, Stripe has signed agreements for a Series I fundraise of more than $6.5 billion, at a reduced valuation of $50 billion. Last time Stripe raised funding in 2021, it was valued at around $95 billion.

Primary investors include existing Stripe shareholders Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital, as well as new investors GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.

In a statement, Stripe confirmed the funds will be used to provide liquidity to current and former employees and to address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards. As a result, it will retire Stripe shares that will offset the issuance of new shares to Series I investors.

The company stated: “Stripe does not need this capital to run its business.”