The acquisition gives Stripe a larger foothold in AI infrastructure as businesses seek cheaper and more flexible access to competing models.
Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, the AI model marketplace and routing platform used to manage inference across hundreds of models and providers, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $7 billion.
Bloomberg reported the acquisition price at more than $7 billion. Stripe and OpenRouter did not disclose financial terms when officially announcing the transaction.
OpenRouter currently processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day across more than 400 AI models and serves over 10 million developers and companies, according to the company.
The platform allows businesses to route AI requests based on factors including task complexity, price, speed and reliability. Customers include Nvidia, Zoom and Lovable.
Stripe said the acquisition will expand its efforts to help AI companies manage the economics of inference. The payments company already offers Token Billing and other infrastructure designed around AI usage.
“Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI,” Stripe cofounder and CEO Patrick Collison said.
The companies said combining Stripe’s financial infrastructure with OpenRouter’s model routing technology could help businesses optimize both revenue and AI computing costs.
OpenRouter said its operations will remain largely unchanged following the transaction. The company will keep its existing name, product, mission and roadmap, while current integrations will continue to work without changes.
The company also stressed that its model neutral approach will remain intact.
“Routing decisions will remain driven by one thing: what’s best for you, the user,” OpenRouter said.
OpenRouter was founded in early 2023 around the view that AI would develop into a multi model ecosystem rather than converge around a single dominant model.
The company said its inference volume has grown by at least ten times annually since its founding. OpenRouter currently has about 90 employees.
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