OpenAI LP and Stripe Inc. have inked a technology partnership that will see the companies adopt one another’s cloud services.

The companies announced the partnership today.

OpenAI offers a paid version of its ChatGPT chatbot, ChatGPT Plus, that provides faster response times and other benefits for $20 per month. As part of its new partnership with Stripe, OpenAI is using the startup’s payments platform to process ChatGPT Plus subscription purchases. The platform is also helping OpenAI bill users of its DALL-E image generation model.

The companies’ new partnership encompasses a number of other Stripe services as well. 

Users who purchase ChatGPT Plus subscriptions enter their payment details into a checkout page powered by Stripe Checkout, a tool for creating e-commerce forms. OpenAI customers can also use Link to speed up purchases. Link is a Stripe service that automatically enters the user’s payment details into a checkout page to save time.

On the back end, OpenAI is using Stripe’s Stripe Tax and Revenue Recognition services to make its accounting team more productive. Stripe Gax automates the process of collecting sales tax. The Revenue Recognition service, in turn, helps with tasks such as managing refunds.

“Beyond payments, Stripe is helping us with everything from recurring billing and tax compliance to automating our financial operations,” said Peter Welinder, vice president of product and partnerships at OpenAI.

For its part, Stripe is adopting OpenAI’s new GPT-4 model to help developers more easily use its services. GPT-4 is a more advanced version of ChatGPT that debuted on Tuesday. It’s better at performing complex tasks such as explaining mathematical concepts and generating software code.

Stripe offers application programming interfaces that enable developers to integrate its services into their software. For each API, it provides technical documentation that explains how it works. If developers need clarification about a certain API feature, they often have to manually search for the answer in Stripe’s documentation.

The company is building a tool that will use GPT-4 to ease the learning process. According to the startup, the tool will enable developers to enter a question about an API and quickly receive a natural language explainer based on the API’s technical documentation. The goal is to reduce the need for developers to manually sift through knowledge base articles. 

Stripe hinted that it also plans to apply GPT-4 in other areas. Last year, the company deployed an earlier OpenAI model to help its customer service representatives answer technical support requests faster. As part of its new partnership with OpenAI, the company may seek to upgrade its AI-powered customer support workflows to GPT-4.

Image: Stripe