John Collison on why @Stripe calls January 1st, 2026 "day one of the singularity," and the record high of new companies | Hanami
John Collison on why @Stripe calls January 1st, 2026 "day one of the singularity," and the record high of new companies being created:
"The Unix epoch is January 1st, 1970. We decided that the singularity epoch is January 1st, 2026... We are now in the singularity."
"It's not a total coincidence that we picked that date. It was the end of last year that I feel like for many of us it was the 'holy crap' moment when it came to coding models and how they're getting so good."
"All the AI folks talk about this idea of recursive self-improvement where the AI uses the AI to make itself better... People refer to the AI as this monolithic thing, but we are clearly in a world where AI capabilities are helping with the rate of improvement in AI."
"As a result of intelligence on tap getting much cheaper, new firm creation is way up. We're seeing the highest rates of new firm creation that we've seen in recent memory on Stripe, right now."
"Because when you have all these tools, it's easier to start a company, it's easier to actually make it successful."
"I think this technology has a lot to be optimistic about. And so we don't see the singularity in any kind of a pessimistic or worried manner. We are in this moment of AI takeoff right now."