Stripe is acquiring OpenRouter, an AI model marketplace, for more than $7 billion, Bloomberg reported, with the deal closing roughly 90 days after OpenRouter raised a $1.3 billion round.
OpenRouter lets developers access and switch between more than 400 AI models through a single API, avoiding lock-in to any one provider, according to TechCrunch. The company raised $113 million in a Series B round in May and says it has 8 million users worldwide, TechCrunch reported.
The price values OpenRouter at roughly 50 times its last reported annualized revenue of $140 million, with gross margins near 70%, Latent Space's AI News newsletter reported. OpenRouter was routing 250 trillion tokens a month at the time of the deal, up from 50 trillion tokens in February, according to the newsletter.
Stripe declined to comment, saying it "does not comment on rumors or speculation," according to TechCrunch. OpenRouter's chief executive has described the company as "the equivalent of Stripe for AI," since it gives customers one access point to different model providers, TechCrunch reported.
For teams routing traffic across multiple model providers, the price tag is a signal that the aggregation and billing layer sitting on top of models, not just the models themselves, is where some of the biggest paydays are landing right now.