Stripe Buys AI Startup OpenRouter For $7.5 Billion 25
Stripe is acquiring AI model marketplace OpenRouter as it pushes beyond payments into the infrastructure behind AI applications. According to The New York Times, the deal is reportedly valued at about $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion allocated to OpenRouter's founders. Less than three months ago the company was valued at about $1.3 billion. CNBC reports: OpenRouter has become popular with developers seeking to use AI models, particularly those considered non-proprietary and available for free. Many of these so-called open-weight AI models stem from Chinese labs like DeepSeek and Z.ai, which have gained steam among developers for generally being more cost-efficient relative to proprietary AI models from U.S. companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
In a blog post about the deal, Stripe noted that it's been working with companies to "optimize their token costs and route tokens efficiently," referring to a kind of metric used to measure AI model usage. Stripe said it's difficult to manage AI costs relative to performance because of the rapid "pace at which models are released and repriced." [...]
OpenRouter said in a blog post that combining with Stripe will help with its overall vision of "a healthy AI ecosystem where many models thrive, where AI neurodiversity is a strength, where a lab or an inference provider with a breakthrough can reach millions of developers, and where no single model becomes the default by inertia." "Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI, and together with OpenRouter we'll help businesses maximize profitability by routing their requests intelligently and spending their tokens efficiently," Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in a statement.
In a blog post about the deal, Stripe noted that it's been working with companies to "optimize their token costs and route tokens efficiently," referring to a kind of metric used to measure AI model usage. Stripe said it's difficult to manage AI costs relative to performance because of the rapid "pace at which models are released and repriced." [...]
OpenRouter said in a blog post that combining with Stripe will help with its overall vision of "a healthy AI ecosystem where many models thrive, where AI neurodiversity is a strength, where a lab or an inference provider with a breakthrough can reach millions of developers, and where no single model becomes the default by inertia." "Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI, and together with OpenRouter we'll help businesses maximize profitability by routing their requests intelligently and spending their tokens efficiently," Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in a statement.
A company buying another company (Score:4, Interesting)
Market consolidation is killing us all. And we're too much of a bunch of pussies and or idiots to do anything about it.
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Re: A company buying another company (Score:1)
I donâ(TM)t think itâ(TM)s fair to disparage us plebs. We are facing smart, motivated, and well-resourced neoliberal forces that have been very effective at reducing interpersonal trust and preventing community formation.
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It is probably a matter of time before they crack down on the NSFW crowd as financial entities seem to do.
for example CivitAI was never the same when the big payment processors basically blacklisted them, although part of that was CivitAI absolutely failing to kick the more egregious illegal content off their system.
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I feel like I'm in a constant race to flee enshittification : Used to use Cursor (it's still my only option at work), but then Musk bought it, and they instantly went in on hard-sell tactics. Switched to vscode + copilot + OpenRouter, but was getting concerned about API costs. Just yesterday I set up a Tencent TokenHub account with their Max package, which required that I switch off copilot if I wanted to be able to use some models like Kimi K3 (had a temperature=1.0 requirement, copilot doesn't let you
Closed-source software outlets called Open-yada (Score:3)
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"Open" (without the word "source") originally typically meant "interoperable", which for software frequently meant as little as "documented and with headers". Before most people had ever heard of "open source" there were all kinds of other open things, most commonly standards. If your platform is open to the public, that's a legitimate kind of openness that's also familiar.
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What will stripe do with their NSFW uses?
Maybe they'll finally be the corporate entity smart enough to just start charging more for NSFW instead of pretending to cave to the puritan crowd. Still can't figure out why in the age of profit and greed being our only moral compass so many companies pretend that sexuality doesn't sell. If you're gonna go for full corruption, lean into it. Just as well let the perverts enjoy the downfall of society along with the rest of the corrupt.
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NSFW would probably block something as benign as "breast cancer" search that showed imagery of breasts. Oh my. Those things babies suckle on for nourishment. Can't be seeing those!
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NSFW would probably block something as benign as "breast cancer" search that showed imagery of breasts. Oh my. Those things babies suckle on for nourishment. Can't be seeing those!
We really need to break our weird puritan heritage in this country. We get half the population into a complete uproar if a breast gets seen, but watching people and buildings get blown up is meh and we're completely desensitized. WTF?
This isn't a comical bubble at all (Score:2)
This is normal, non-insane valuation in a market that is definitely not a bubble more inflated that the Bootes supervoid.
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Used them a few times (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a couple of projects that need raw access to an appropriate AI model and OpenRouter can get that for you. And they do make it very convenient. You put some cash in your account with them and use their API to get access to whichever model you happen to choose at the time. It shows the prices clearly, so you can experiment to find one that works well for your purposes and is as inexpensive as possible. I didn't bother to write the code that interfaces with OpenRouter of course, I used AI for that.
I am frankly amazed at the $billions that were spent to buy this thing. It's really just a router for AI prompts and a convenient way to pay for the service, and they take a little cream off the top like a credit card agency. But I guess this is what attracted Stripe, which acts as a payment intermediary for all kinds of things. Stripe probably had very little expertise in the AI arena and this was an easy though expensive way in to the modern paradigm of paying for AI as a commodity.
Shouldn't they be making network hardware? (Score:3)
buying data?! (Score:2)
You could vibe code openrouter... what's worth billions? the data they collect? wtf?
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It's all marketing. It's tempting to copy them just to see if I can fleece some VCs for cash. I'll setup a shitty server on a shitty connection and then market the shit out of the site, shouting AI over and over until they throw a billion at me. It might even work if I put on a suit!
I'm just not the type that wants to exploit others for my own gains.
I should of been raised different. /s