Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for More Than $7 Billion

Stripe has wrapped up negotiations to acquire the startup OpenRouter, Bloomberg reports. Earlier, last month, The Wall Street Journal wrote that the two sides were in acquisition talks. Now, according to Bloomberg, those discussions have led to a deal worth more than $7 billion.

OpenRouter helps customers pick different artificial intelligence models for specific tasks, depending on their needs and budget. In essence, the startup serves as a single point of access to a host of AI systems, freeing users from being locked into a single provider. That is exactly why the company's head, Alex Atallah, has called OpenRouter “the equivalent of Stripe for AI”: just as Stripe offers a single interface to payment systems, OpenRouter provides single-point access to models.

By the startup's own figures, it has 8 million users worldwide, and more than 400 models are available through its service.

The company's valuation has been climbing rapidly. In May, OpenRouter announced it had raised $113 million in a Series B round at a stated valuation of $1.3 billion. Its investors include Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and CapitalG, Alphabet's venture arm. If Bloomberg is to be believed, in just a few months the price Stripe is prepared to pay has grown more than fivefold relative to that valuation.

A Stripe spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.

Source: TechCrunch