Stripe Acquires OpenRouter in $7.5 Billion Deal
Fintech company Stripe has acquired AI model gateway provider OpenRouter in a deal valued at approximately $7.5 billion, significantly higher than its May valuation of around $1.3 billion. The acquisition outbids other tech firms like Databricks and positions Stripe to expand into the growing AI infrastructure market by leveraging OpenRouter’s platform for developers accessing multiple models from over 80 providers. OpenRouter currently processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day, serving a community of over 10 million users. It earns revenue through a 5.5% take rate on spending via its platform and is projected to generate $140 million in annualized revenue by July—up from around $50 million at the start of the year. Stripe aims to apply similar toll-collector strategies used for online payments, now extending into AI token processing. The deal also highlights OpenRouter’s potential as a distribution channel akin to Cloudflare before its enterprise growth took off. However, major tech firms like Amazon and Microsoft already offer free multimodel routing services, posing challenges to Stripe's long-term strategy in the space.
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Topics: AI fintech OpenRouter Stripe