Stripe acquires OpenRouter in $7B+ AI infrastructure deal

Stripe has finalised an agreement to acquire OpenRouter, an AI model gateway and routing startup, in a transaction valued at over $7 billion. Founded in early 2023 by OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah, OpenRouter operates a unified API layer that lets developers and enterprises route queries across more than 400 AI models while optimizing for cost, latency and performance.

OpenRouter currently supports around 8 million users, and its CEO has described the company as “the Stripe for AI.” Stripe plans to combine OpenRouter’s model-routing gateway with Metronome, its usage-based billing engine, and its core payment rails to create tighter infrastructure for metering, routing and monetizing AI workloads.

Stripe was already OpenRouter’s core billing infrastructure partner before the acquisition. The purchase price marks a steep rise from OpenRouter’s $1.3 billion valuation earlier this year, reflecting growing enterprise demand for multi-model routing and cost-efficient inference solutions.