Stripe today published six charts comparing Europe with the United States on economic growth, household consumption, corporate value, founders' experience of government and the money flowing to AI businesses through its own payments network. Patrick Collison, the company's chief executive, posted the material on X this afternoon, describing it as data Stripe had recently assembled on entrepreneurship and compute in Europe.

In Short

Stripe, a company that processes online payments, today shared charts showing Europe trailing the United States on economic growth, the value of its biggest companies and the money going to AI businesses. Founders it surveyed gave governments in Spain, Germany, Italy and France low marks, and in no EU country did even half say they would pick the same country for their next company. That matters to people who buy and sell advertising, because the charts point to where fast-growing companies, and the marketing budgets they fund, are gathering. One catch: the AI chart has no numbers on its side and Stripe has not said how many founders it asked, so you can see the gap but not measure it exactly.

Six charts from a payments company

Collison's post, timestamped 4:32 PM on September 24, 2026, linked to a page hosted at eudata.vercel.app and to Stripe's economics newsletter at stripeeconomics.substack.com. "We hope that one of the useful roles that Stripe can play is in collecting and publishing empirical data pertaining to entrepreneurship and industry in Europe," he wrote. He framed the release as a contribution to a policy debate rather than a product: "There's growing appetite to get Europe on a better footing, and cross-sectional comparisons can often shine light on where opportunities lie."

The page carries six charts. Three are macroeconomic: cumulative real GDP growth since the Maastricht Treaty, real household consumption per capita, and the aggregate market capitalization of each economy's 50 largest companies. Two report founder surveys, one on dealing with government and one on whether founders would base a new company in the same country today. The sixth draws on Stripe's own ledger: the monthly payment volume of AI businesses on Stripe, split by the country where each company has its headquarters.

By the time it was captured for this article, the post had drawn about 551,500 views and 139 replies. On November 3, 2025, Collison had published a Stripe revenue index showing US software startups pulling away from European peersfrom mid-2023, with the US reaching about 1,400 against roughly 600 for the EU. Today's release widens the lens from startup revenue to the whole economy, and adds responses from founders themselves.

Growth, consumption and corporate value

Stripe prints no data labels on its three economic charts, so the figures below are PPC Land's approximate readings of the plotted lines.

Three decades of output

The GDP chart sets every economy at 100 in 1992, the year European leaders signed the Maastricht Treaty. By 2025 the US line stands at about 229, meaning the American economy has grown by roughly 129% in real terms. Canada follows at about 213 and the United Kingdom at about 189. The European Union reaches about 175 and the euro area about 163. Japan, at about 133, trails the group.

The lines move together until the mid-1990s. The EU and the euro area then fall behind the US and Canada, and the distance never closes. The euro area, the subset of EU members sharing a currency, sits below the wider union throughout.

Consumption per head

The consumption chart starts in 1950 and is measured in constant 2021 dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity, a method that corrects for price differences between countries. In the most recent year plotted, real household consumption per person reaches about $60,000 in the US, against about $42,000 in Canada, $41,000 in the UK, $38,000 in the euro area, $37,000 in the EU and $32,000 in Japan.

In 1950, US consumption per head was about $13,500 and the EU's about $5,000, a ratio of roughly 2.7 to 1. That ratio has narrowed to about 1.6 to 1. The absolute gap, however, has widened: around 2000 the difference was close to $17,000 per person, and in the latest year plotted it is nearer $23,000. In relative terms Europe has kept closing a little of the distance. In dollars per person, it has fallen further behind.

The top 50

The market value chart is the starkest of the three. The combined capitalization of the 50 largest US companies rises from about $1 trillion in 1990 to about $41 trillion at the latest point. The EU equivalent moves from about $0.4 trillion to about $6 trillion. In 2000 the ratio was roughly 2 to 1, with the US near $7 trillion and the EU near $3.5 trillion. It is now roughly 7 to 1.

Most of that divergence is recent. The US line fell from about $22 trillion in 2021 to about $17 trillion in 2022, then more than doubled. The EU line has stayed within a band of roughly $2 trillion to $6 trillion since the late 1990s. The chart uses current dollars, unadjusted for inflation or exchange rates.

What founders told Stripe

The two survey charts carry printed values, which makes them the most precise part of the release.

Dealing with government

Founders rated their experience of dealing with government on a scale where 1 means extremely difficult and 10 is the easiest rating. The chart gives an "overall European-company mean" of 5.4. Switzerland scores 8.2, the United States 7.6 and the United Kingdom 6.9, all three outside the EU. The best-rated EU member is Poland at 6.2, followed by the Netherlands at 6.1 and Ireland at 5.9. Below the mean sit France at 4.5, Italy at 4.2, Germany at 3.7 and Spain at 3.3.

The spread between Switzerland and Spain is 4.9 points on a 10-point scale. Within the EU alone, from Poland to Spain, it is 2.9 points.

Choosing the same country

The second survey asked founders, grouped by the country where their companies are registered, whether they would base a new company there today. In the United States, 85% said they would. Switzerland follows at 68%. Sweden, at 47%, is the highest EU member, ahead of Ireland and Italy at 44% each, level with the UK. Germany records 40%, the Netherlands 38% and France 33%. Spain comes last at 25%, which leaves three quarters of its founders who did not choose it. No EU member reaches half.

The two surveys do not move in step. The Netherlands scores relatively well on government, at 6.1, yet only 38% of its founders would stay; Italy scores 4.2 and matches Ireland's 44%. What explains the difference? Stripe does not say, and the charts alone cannot answer it. The country lists also differ: Poland appears only in the government chart, and Sweden only in the second survey.

There is a further ambiguity about who was asked. The government chart refers to an "overall European-company mean", which suggests the respondents run European companies. If so, the US and Swiss figures may describe European founders who registered their companies abroad - a group that has already chosen to leave - rather than American or Swiss founders at home. The material does not settle which reading is correct.

AI payments without a scale

The sixth chart is the only one drawn from Stripe's own transaction data, and the only one without numbers. It plots the monthly payment volume of AI businesses on Stripe by headquarters country, from January 2023 to a final point in roughly the second quarter of 2026. There are two lines, US and EU, and eight evenly spaced gridlines, none of them labelled.

The US line climbs steadily through 2023 and 2024, steepens from early 2025 and jumps again in the opening months of 2026. The EU line is close to flat at the chart's scale. Measured against the gridlines, and assuming the vertical axis begins at zero, which the chart does not confirm, the US line ends at about six times its January 2023 height. The EU line finishes at roughly 3% of the US level. Those are PPC Land's estimates from the plotted lines, not figures Stripe has published.

Payment volume is money processed through Stripe for companies it classifies as AI businesses. It is not the AI sector's total revenue, and it leaves out European AI firms that use other processors. The material does not explain how Stripe classifies a business as AI, or what share of either market it handles.

What the page does not disclose

The material reviewed by PPC Land - the six charts as they appear on the page, plus Collison's post - carries no methodology. There are no sample sizes, survey dates, question wording or response rates for the founder surveys, and the three economic charts name no data sources beyond their units. Collison's post describes the data as covering "entrepreneurship/compute in Europe," yet none of the six charts measures computing capacity. If the site holds further charts or notes, they were not part of the captured page.

Readers noticed. An account named randomiser replied with the AI chart attached, asked what its scale was and suggested that without one the chart conveyed little. None of this makes the charts wrong, but it leaves the most striking comparison in the release as the least verifiable.

A payments company with a view

Stripe is not a statistics office. It earns fees on the payments of the companies whose formation and growth it measures, in Europe as much as in the United States, which gives it unusual visibility and an interest in the outcome.

Its data has pointed in a consistent direction this year. In a Bloomberg podcast episode published on May 16, 2026, Stripe president John Collison said new business creation on Stripe rose 71% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, attributing the increase to AI lowering the cost of starting a company. Stripe also sits in the plumbing of AI-mediated shopping. It co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI for ChatGPT's Instant Checkout on September 29, 2025, and on April 24, 2026 it joined the Tech Council of the Universal Commerce Protocol, the standard Google developed with retailers for purchases made by AI agents, alongside Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce.

Draghi, the Rhine Group and Brussels

The release arrives a month after Collison took a formal role in Europe's competitiveness debate. In late August 2026 he and Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister, formed the Rhine Group, a forum of economists, executives and former officials that the two co-chair, with the Spanish economist and former MEP Luis Garicano as executive director. According to the Irish Examiner, which reported the group's formation on August 25, it plans to convene leaders from government, academia and business around research papers circulated in advance, under the Chatham House Rule. The group's founding statement said only four of the world's 50 largest technology companies are European, according to the same report. Members listed by the Maltese Herald include the economist Philippe Aghion, Shopify chief executive Tobi Lütke and Klarna co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski.

Collison's post today does not mention the Rhine Group, and the charts appear under Stripe's name.

Draghi's September 2024 report on European competitiveness remains the reference point. On September 16, 2025, he used a Brussels conference to demand a sweeping simplification of Europe's privacy rules and a pause on parts of the AI Act. The European Commission proposed its Digital Omnibus on November 19, 2025, a package that would rewrite parts of the GDPR, the EU's data protection regulation, in ways designed to ease AI development. Council and Parliament negotiators then reached a provisional agreement on May 7, 2026 that pushed the AI Act's high-risk obligations to December 2, 2027 and August 2, 2028. The Irish Council presidency's compromise text of September 3, 2026 names legitimate interest as a basis for AI developers' use of personal data and drops an unconditional opt-out.

The measure closest to Stripe's second survey is EU Inc, an optional company form the Commission proposed on March 18, 2026. According to the Commission, registration would be fully digital, take 48 hours and cost no more than 100 euros, and the form would be open to any founder who finds it suitable; the Commission set the objective of agreement between Parliament and Council by the end of 2026. An EU Inc would still be anchored in the national legal system of the member state where it registers for everything the regulation does not cover, according to an analysis by the law firm Schoenherr. Much of the national administration that founders rated would therefore remain in place.

The regulation argument

Stripe's charts do not say why Europe trails, and the evidence PPC Land has covered points in more than one direction.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, covered by PPC Land in January 2026, found that after the GDPR became enforceable in May 2018 the number of EU deals led by US investors fell 20.63% relative to US ventures and the amounts invested fell 13.15%, a loss put at more than $1.58 billion a year. The same article noted that EU venture investment averaged 0.2% of GDP over the past decade, against 0.7% in the US, and that the US had 137 venture funds larger than $1 billion against 11 in the EU.

A 2024 study by Columbia Law School professor Anu Bradford reached a different conclusion. It found no clear evidence that EU digital regulation had significantly held back European technology companies, and pointed instead to a fragmented single market, risk-averse capital, less dynamic labour markets and weaker venture ecosystems.

The founder ratings sit awkwardly with an explanation centred only on Brussels. Poland and Spain apply the same EU rules on data protection, digital markets and AI, yet sit at opposite ends of the EU ranking. That fits Bradford's emphasis on national fragmentation, and the complaint in several replies to Collison's post that bureaucracy and taxation - both largely national matters - weigh on founders.

Why the marketing industry is watching

Advertising budgets follow revenue, and revenue is where the charts show the widest gaps.

WPP Media's midyear forecast, released on June 16, 2026, projected global advertising revenue growth of 4.4% to $1.3 trillion in 2026, with the US growing 11.9% on the strength of AI investment concentrated in the American market. The IAB raised its 2026 US forecast to 12.3% on September 10. In Europe, IAB Europe's AdEx Benchmark put it at 131.1 billion euros for 2025, up 10.5%.

Company formation feeds that spending. PPC Land's analysis of Stripe's November 2025 index noted that startups growing at the US rate can sustain higher customer acquisition costs than slower European peers, and can outbid them for the same inventory.

The AI layer through which a growing share of that spending passes is also concentrated outside Europe. France's competition authority concluded on July 17, 2026 that OpenAI, Google and Anthropic together held more than 84% of the global AI agent market, citing Sensor Tower data for May 2026, and repeatedly named Mistral as the only European alternative of scale. Product availability runs the other way. When Google extended its Gemini Spark agent to more than 160 additional countries on July 30, 2026, it kept the tool unavailable in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Nigeria.

Reaction on X

Replies captured with the post split between agreement and qualification. Sven Borchmann, who said he is building a ctDNA diagnostics company in Cologne, argued that compute is the easy part of the gap in his field; the harder constraint is the time it takes to get a validated assay reimbursed across Europe's fragmented payer systems. Senne Van Heghe wrote that bureaucracy, rules and taxation weigh on those who try to build companies in Europe. Mårten Mickos proposed looking at an EU subset that excludes Italy, Spain, France and Germany, summarising his view as a preference for the continent's flanks.

Stripe's own figures partly support Mickos: those four economies hold the bottom four places in the government ratings, while Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland score between 5.9 and 6.2. The second survey is less tidy, with Germany at 40% and Italy at 44% both ahead of the Netherlands at 38%.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Stripe, the payments company, through chief executive Patrick Collison, who co-chairs the Rhine Group with Mario Draghi. The data covers founders and economies in the United States, the European Union, the euro area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada and Japan.

What: Six charts comparing Europe with the US and other economies. Founders rated dealing with government at 3.3 in Spain and 3.7 in Germany against 7.6 in the US and 8.2 in Switzerland, with a European-company mean of 5.4. The share of founders who would base a new company in the same country today ranged from 85% in the US to 25% in Spain, with no EU member at half. The 50 largest US companies are worth roughly seven times their EU counterparts, and a chart of AI payment volume on Stripe shows a wide US lead but carries no scale.

When: Collison posted the material on X today, September 24, 2026, at 4:32 PM. The AI payment chart runs from January 2023 to roughly the second quarter of 2026, the GDP index from 1992 to 2025 and the consumption series from 1950.

Where: The charts are hosted at eudata.vercel.app, with further material pointed to at stripeeconomics.substack.com. The founder surveys cover ten countries each, seven of them EU members, with Poland appearing only in the government ratings and Sweden only in the second survey.

Why: Collison said Stripe hopes to collect and publish empirical data on entrepreneurship and industry in Europe as appetite grows to put the continent on a better footing. For the advertising market, the figures bear on where fast-growing companies and their marketing budgets are forming, at a time when US ad growth forecasts for 2026 run at 11.9% to 12.3% and the AI layer is concentrated in three American companies.