Stripe to buy startup OpenRouter for $10 billion: Report

Payments company Stripe is in preliminary talks to acquire AI model marketplace OpenRouter in a deal valued at around $10 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report. If the deal goes through, it will mark an eight-time increase from the startup’s $1.3 billion valuation, which it achieved earlier in May after its latest funding round.

In an interview with The New York Times in April, OpenRouter co-founder and CEO Alex Atallah described the company as the AI equivalent of Stripe. “A lot of what we do is try to help people find the right vendor for the job,” he said, referring to OpenRouter’s role in helping customers avoid dependence on a single AI provider.

What is OpenRouter

Founded in 2023, OpenRouter gives developers access to more than 400 large language models from over 70 providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek and several open-source models, through a single API. Instead of integrating with each provider separately, companies can route requests through OpenRouter, which automatically selects a model based on factors such as cost, speed, or performance.

That service has become more relevant as businesses increasingly use different AI models for different tasks. As AI adoption grows, so do computing costs, prompting companies to look for ways to optimise spending while avoiding vendor lock-in. Platforms like OpenRouter act as a marketplace, allowing enterprises to switch between models without rebuilding their applications.

The company’s recent funding reflects investor confidence in that business. In May, OpenRouter raised $113 million in a Series B round led by Alphabet’s CapitalG, taking its valuation to about $1.3 billion. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and Sequoia also participated in the round.

For Stripe, the acquisition would build on an existing relationship, as OpenRouter already uses Stripe to process payments. Owning OpenRouter would not only expand Stripe’s presence in AI infrastructure but also give it a foothold in the layer that connects enterprises with multiple AI providers.

OpenRouter is not the only startup to play in this space. As AI workloads become spread across different models, companies that help customers compare, route and pay for AI services are emerging as an important part of the ecosystem. Cursor recently introduced its own routing product, while Databricks also offers similar capabilities for enterprises managing multiple AI models.