Stripe buys AI model router OpenRouter in reported $7.5B deal

Stripe Inc. today said it has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence model routing startup OpenRouter Inc. in a deal reported at $7.5 billion or more.

Neither company disclosed terms and the reported numbers do not agree. The New York Times said $7.5 billion, citing a person with knowledge of the terms. Axios put it above $8 billion, and said it’s mostly in stock. Bloomberg had the figure above $7 billion on Sunday. Talks opened nearer to $10 billion, according to earlier Wall Street Journal reporting. Closing is expected within weeks.

Developers point their code at OpenRouter once. Behind that single endpoint sit more than 400 models. More than 80 providers supply them. Requests get scored on complexity, price and speed, then sent to whichever model fits best. Switching providers takes no code change. About 5% of the inference spending that runs through the platform stays with the company.

More than 10 million developers and companies use it, and daily volume runs past 10 trillion tokens. Nvidia Corp., Zoom Communications Inc. and Lovable Labs Inc. are among the customers. About 90 people work at the company, which Alex Atallah and Louis Vichy founded in 2023.

“Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI, and it’s clear that the real-world economic potential will depend on making good use of scarce compute resources,” said Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder and chief executive. “Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI, and together with OpenRouter we’ll help businesses maximize profitability by routing their requests intelligently and spending their tokens efficiently.”