More startups are reaching $10 million in 3 months than ever before

AI has given rise to a new phenomenon in the startup world: startups that almost instantly generated millions of ARR (annual recurring revenue).

Stories abound of founders who have gone from zero to $10 million, or as much as $100 million, in annual recurring revenue in a matter of months.

To be fair, this alone is no harbinger of long-term success. Venture capitalists say that permanent growth is much more important than rapid growth. Investors want to back companies where the customer cancellation or churn rate is low, which means customers are happy. They want this annual or monthly recurring revenue to continue and grow, not fluctuate and collapse.

However, this phenomenon is real. As part of Stripe’s annual report, released on Tuesday, the payments giant revealed that it has more new businesses starting to use its products in 2025 than ever before, with more than half of them — specifically 57% — based outside the US. It said this 2025 cohort grew 50% faster than those who started using Stripe products in 2024. While Stripe did not disclose hard numbers, it did say that 2025 saw the number of these startups reach $10 million in ARR double in three months compared to the number that occurred in 2024.

The letter also noted that Stripe Atlas – the company’s business founding tool – saw a 41% increase in company foundings last year. Of those new startups, 20% charged their first client within 30 days, compared to just 8% in 2020, underscoring how quickly this new generation of founders can move.

By comparison, in 2024, the founders were still publicly celebrating hitting $10 million in annual rate of return in three years — which, by most business standards, is still a metric worth bragging about.

So for all of you on social media saying things like “booting to $10M ARR is easier and less risky than building a VC-backed unicorn,” or things like “AI startups hit $10M ARR with just three people rewriting the rules of the entire game,” well, there’s now quite a bit of data to back that up.