More startups surpass $10M ARR in 3 months than ever before

Artificial intelligence brought to the startup world the rise of a new phenomenon: startups that almost immediately reached multi-million dollar ARR (annual recurring revenue).

There are many stories of founders going from zero to $10 million, or even $100 million, in annual recurring revenue in a matter of months.

To be fair, this alone is not a harbinger of long-term success. VCs say that sustained growth is much more important than super-fast growth. Investors want to back companies where the rate at which customers cancel or stop paying is low, which means customers are happy. They want that annual or monthly recurring revenue to stick and grow, not ebb and flow.

Even so, the phenomenon is real. As part of Stripe’s annual report, was released On Tuesday, the payments giant revealed that it had more new businesses starting to use its products in 2025 than ever before, with more than half — specifically 57% — from outside the United States. That 2025 cohort grew 50% faster than those who started using Stripe products in 2024, it said. While Stripe didn’t disclose hard numbers, it said that in 2025 twice as many of these startups reached $10 million in ARR within three months compared to the number that did in 2024.

The letter also noted that Stripe Atlas — the company’s business onboarding tool — saw a 41 percent increase in company formations last year. Of these new startups, 20% billed their first customer within 30 days, up from just 8% in 2020, further highlighting how fast this new generation of founders is moving.

By comparison, in 2024, the founders were still celebrates in public hitting $10 million in ARR in three years – which is still, by most business standards, a brag-worthy metric.

So for everyone on social media saying things like“Startup at $10M ARR is easier and less risky than building a VC-backed unicorn” or things like“native AI startups that exceed $10M ARR with just three people are rewriting the entire playbook”, well, now there’s a lot of data to back it up.