In late December, Stripe CEO and tech billionaire Patrick Collison and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen published a one-page website with the provocative title “A Call for New Aesthetics.” In around 500 words, the two longtime collaborators outlined an informal grant program they were launching to fund artists and thinkers who want to define the aesthetic of the 21st century. The 20th century, they noted, was largely influenced by a design ethos that emerged from the Bauhaus school of modernist art, architecture, and craft that launched in Germany in 1919. In the 21st century, they argued, perhaps it’s time for something new. Collison and Cowen offered no specifics on what that might look like. But for anyone with an idea for what shape a new aesthetic might take, they pledged to issue grants ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. And plenty of people had ideas. Hundreds of ideas poured in. “We had to close applications after a few weeks because there were so many,” Collison wrote on X. In May, Collison and Cowen announced that they had issued 28 grants, and the projects range widely. There are designers exploring new architectural styles and languages. There are publishers experimenting with bookmaking. There are technologists examining the role of design in software, and the role of code in design. There are sculptors, painters, illustrators, YouTubers, hardware designers, and makers. One is “rethinking what personal computing should be when the software inside it can think.” Another is building a “silent, analog meditation timer.” Another wants to “depict the projected abstraction of life as perceived by life.” {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/07\/p-1-91538341-stripe-most-underrated-influential-159-billion-company-power-map_baf32d.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/07\/p-2-mobile-915383

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