Real world economic potential of tokens will depend on efficient usage of scarce compute resources, Stripe’s Patrick Collison said.
After weeks of speculation, Stripe has announced that it is acquiring New York-based AI marketplace OpenRouter.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but recent reports suggest the acquisition would cost Stripe between $7bn and $10bn – dramatically higher than the $1.3bn valuation OpenRouter hit after a $113m round a few months ago.
Stripe said the acquisition will improve its services that help businesses optimise token costs – something it has undertaken over the past year. It is also gaining a user-base of more than 10m OpenRouter users globally.
Token optimisation is difficult, Stripe explained. “The sheer matrix of variables – which model to use for which tasks, at which speed and at what price – makes managing cost-versus-performance trade-offs in real time extremely difficult,” it said in a statement announcing the acquisition.
Founded in 2023, OpenRouter is a new type of marketplace that offers access to more than 500 large language models (LLMs), routing user requests to the best available AI provider and letting users shop around based on price, speed and reliability among other factors.
It claims to be the first of its kind of platform set up for LLMs, reflecting a growing appetite for AI models and a fast diversifying market and is already used by the likes of Nvidia, Zoom and Swedish vibe-coding start-up Lovable.
“Together, Stripe and OpenRouter will be able to help companies manage both sides of profitability in the AI era; maximising revenue and efficacy while minimising costs,” Stripe said.
The company’s co-founder Patrick Collison said: “Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI and it’s clear that the real-world economic potential will depend on making good use of scarce compute resources.”
Alex Atallah, the co-founder and CEO of OpenRouter once described his company as an AI equivalent of Stripe.
“Stripe has spent over a decade building trusted, neutral infrastructure for businesses, and OpenRouter was built on the same philosophy,” he said.
“We believe intelligence will be multi-model: no single model will be optimal for every task, and developers need a neutral layer to orchestrate and manage them all. Joining Stripe lets us accelerate that mission and bring the full AI ecosystem to every business.”
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