Stripe plans to acquire the AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, with a transaction valuation of approximately 10 billion dollars

According to The Information, fintech company Stripe is in exclusive acquisition negotiations with AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, with a deal valuation of approximately $10 billion. Sources reveal that OpenRouter had previously received acquisition interest from several large tech companies, but Stripe has now entered exclusive negotiation stages. The related deal has not yet been finalized, and specific terms may still change.

OpenRouter was established in 2023 and is positioned as an AI infrastructure platform that connects users with various large language models, allowing developers to call AI models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google through a unified interface, and choose different models based on performance, price, and availability. As enterprises accelerate the adoption of generative AI, the importance of AI model calling infrastructure and model routing services continues to rise. OpenRouter has become a key intermediary in the AI application development ecosystem by providing model aggregation, traffic allocation, and cost optimization capabilities.

If the deal is completed, it will become one of Stripe's significant moves in the AI field in recent years. Stripe has primarily focused on payment infrastructure, financial services, and enterprise software, and acquiring OpenRouter may further drive its expansion into the AI developer infrastructure space. Market participants believe that as the number of AI models rapidly increases, infrastructure companies that connect different models, optimize calling costs, and manage AI workflows are gaining more attention, and OpenRouter's potential high valuation also reflects investors' optimism about growth opportunities in the AI application layer and infrastructure layer.