This is a great product and Stripe seems to be a good actor...but to me this looks like an acquihire with an eventual "our incredible journey" post in the future. Or frozen development while the team moves on to other Stripe projects.
Agree. But I think they made the right call. Monetising Tonic seems quite difficult, and this will give them time to not worry about fund-raising, burn rates, etc. and continue building their product for a while at least.
After their two years at Stripe are up, they can go back to working on it if it still makes sense.
What makes this the exception?