Payments company Stripe has finalized a deal to acquire OpenRouter, a startup that lets developers access and route between more than 400 AI models, for more than $7 billion, a roughly 5.4x markup over OpenRouter's $1.3 billion valuation from May 2026. Analysts say the deal turns AI model routing into a payments business, since every model call OpenRouter handles can now be billed through Stripe's systems.

World · Aug 18 · L1-L4

Science · Aug 16 · L1-L4