Three Companies Hanging Ten on AI Wave

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to dramatically impact the global economy in coming years, perhaps contributing 3.5% to global GDP by 2030, according to one study. Another suggests AI could raise U.S. labor productivity by 15% over 10 years, adding $4.5 trillion in economic growth.

Familiar companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are investing billions to build AI data centers. In February, AI chipmaker Nvidia reported full year revenues of over $130 billion, 114% higher than the year before, driving its market cap to over $3.3 trillion.

But other companies are benefiting in unique ways from the rush to adopt AI, such as companies that offer fundamental business support, like payment processing for AI businesses, content security, and real estate development. Some examples:

Stripe – The financial-technology platform founded in 2010 recently reported that it generated $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, a 38% increase from 2023. The company reported that its Stripe Billing platform “is emerging as the revenue engine of the AI era” with 80% of the Forbes Cloud 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50 as Stripe customers. The company is valued at $91.5 billion, up 30% over 2024.

Tollbit – This company helps publishers, content creators and owners monitor, manage, and monetize content, promoting fair compensation for content and data accessed by AI large language models. Data scraping by AI agents potentially decreases traffic to content creators and owners, threatening longstanding business models. Tollbit seeks to solve this challenge with a technology platform to manage and authorize access to content with compensation to owners. Founded in 2023, Tollbit raised a $24 million Series A round of financing last October.

Crusoe – Founded in 2018, Crusoe is building cost-effective solutions for AI infrastructure. Research indicates that power requirements for U.S. AI data centers could reach 68 gigawatts by 2027. For perspective, California’s total power capacity in 2022 was 86 gigawatts. By combining large scale wind, solar, and natural gas energy with AI data-center development, Crusoe is working to solve growing power needs. Crusoe’s revenues reportedly grew 82% in 2024, reaching $276 million, and Forbes magazine reports that this could grow to over $500 million in 2025. The company has a reported value of $2.8 billion.