Stripe Agrees to Buy OpenRouter for $7.5B, Its Largest Acquisition
Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, an AI startup that helps developers access and switch between AI models, for $7.5 billion, according to sources cited by the New York Times. The deal, Stripe's largest-ever acquisition, will reportedly pay $1.5 billion to founders and $6 billion to investors, and is seen as a bet on a future of mixed AI models and a foothold in the token market.
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Bloomberg : Stripe Agrees to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter; No Terms Disclosed — Stripe Inc. has agreed to buy OpenRouter Inc., an artificial intelligence startup that helps developers access and switch between AI models. No terms were disclosed. — “Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI …
Erin Griffith / New York Times : Stripe agrees to buy New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to investors — The deal is significant for the artificial intelligence industry, uniting Stripe's payments business with OpenRouter's helping businesses direct their spending on A.I. models.
TechCrunch AIJulie Bort
Stripe confirmed on Wednesday that it was buying OpenRouter. While the company didn’t disclose the deal price, sources told the New York Times that it paid $7.5 billion. That’s a huge step up from OpenRouter’s $1.3 billion valuation in May.To put that price in context, the founders alone will reportedly receive $1.5 billion from the sale — more than the startup’s entire valuation just three months ago. Investors will get the remaining $6 billion, according to the NYT. Stripe reportedly had to outbid others interested in the fast-growing startup, including Databricks. But the question is: what does a payments giant want with a startup that routes prompts between different AI models? The short and funny answer, according to a leaked letter from Stripe’s founders to its investors about the deal, is: the singularity. “It’s a fuzzy and perhaps already overworked term but we decided that January 1 marked the beginning of the singularity and we’ve been operating on that basis,” they wrote in
Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal : Stripe's OpenRouter deal, its largest-ever acquisition, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models and gives it a foothold in the token market — The Stripe deal for OpenRouter, founded by an NFT entrepreneur, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models
