
Stripe to Acquire OpenRouter in $7.5B Bet on the AI Economy
Stripe has agreed to acquire AI model routing gateway OpenRouter in a deal reported at roughly $7.5 billion, signaling a shift toward treating model selection as a financial decision. The acquisition is part of Stripe's plan to build an economic operating system for AI, combining payments, billing, token metering, and model routing. The move comes as competitors like Ramp launch similar routing services, and as inference hardware startups like Etched and Groq raise significant funding.


