Stripe reportedly finalizes deal to buy AI model router OpenRouter for more than $7B

OpenRouter, a company that provides developers with a single gateway to over 400 artificial intelligence models, has agreed to be acquired by Stripe for more than $7 billion, according to a Bloomberg report. OpenRouter's pitch is that one integration can last forever, as customers can switch between AI models like OpenAI, Anthropic, or cheaper open-weight alternatives without altering code.

The company takes a 5% cut of the inference spend and has around 8 million users. Stripe has not confirmed or denied the report, stating it does not comment on rumors or speculation. OpenRouter was founded in 2023 by Alex Atallah and Louis Vichy, who describe the company as "Stripe for AI" due to its single access point across model providers, removing integration work and preventing lock-in.

OpenRouter's weekly throughput hit 25 trillion tokens by May, surpassing a quadrillion tokens before the end of the year. The company's revenue is around $50 million annually, up from $19 million a year earlier. Alphabet Inc.'s CapitalG LP led the $113 million Series B round that OpenRouter announced in May, with Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures also participating.

Stripe has been OpenRouter's payments provider since January and co-authored the Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI. Inference is sold in metered units and reconciled across dozens of suppliers. OpenRouter competes with open-source routing projects and routing features from major cloud providers. Stripe has made several infrastructure acquisitions in recent years, including Bridge Network and Privy, and bid for PayPal in a $53 billion deal.