Stripe clinches OpenRouter deal valued at more than $7 billion
Why it matters: The purchase would vault Stripe deeper into AI infrastructure just months after OpenRouter was valued at $1.3 billion.
Stripe has finalized an agreement to acquire OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, a deal that would mark one of the bigger AI startup takeovers of the year. OpenRouter, founded in 2023, helps developers and companies route workloads across hundreds of artificial intelligence models to find cheaper or more efficient options. The New York-based startup said in May that it serves 8 million developers and gives access to more than 400 models. It had raised more than $150 million from investors including CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures. Chief executive Alex Atallah, a co-founder of OpenSea, started OpenRouter less than a year after leaving the NFT marketplace.