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 (Erin Griffith/New York Times)

Payments company Stripe announced on Wednesday its acquisition of OpenRouter, a marketplace that assists businesses in routing and optimizing token usage in the rapidly growing AI industry. Although the exact purchase price was not disclosed, sources close to the deal revealed that it surpassed $8 billion. The acquisition is part of Stripe's year-long strategy to expand its presence in AI, including the introduction of token billing to monitor AI model consumption.

AI marketplace platforms like OpenRouter enable developers to submit queries to numerous AI models through a single interface, which has become a popular platform for testing and developing new AI systems. Stripe's CEO, Patrick Collison, emphasized that the economic potential of AI depends on the effective utilization of scarce computing resources.

OpenRouter, established in 2023, handles more than 10 trillion tokens daily from over 400 AI models for a community of more than 10 million developers and companies. A Deloitte report from March indicated that most companies with annual revenues of at least $500 million anticipate consuming more than 10 billion tokens per month by 2028.

OpenRouter has secured funding from notable investors such as Menlo Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In May, the company raised $113 million in a funding round led by Alphabet's independent growth fund, CapitalG. Stripe, valued at $159 billion in a tender offer earlier this year, is pursuing an acquisition of PayPal for over $53 billion, according to a Reuters report last month.

Companies operating on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume last year, marking a 34% increase from 2024.