Three months ago it was worth $1.3 billion. Stripe is paying $7.5 billion for the switchboard every AI request passes through.
OpenRouter confirmed on 19 August that it has agreed to be bought by Stripe, three days after Bloomberg first reported a deal worth more than $7 billion. The New York Times puts the price at $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion going to the founders and $6 billion to investors — against a valuation of roughly $1.3 billion three months earlier. Alongside the announcement OpenRouter published the numbers that explain the price: more than 10 trillion tokens routed a day, more than 400 models, over 10 million developers and companies, and inference volume growing roughly tenfold a year. The company says nothing changes for users — same name, same product, same roadmap — and the deal is still subject to customary closing conditions, with completion expected in the coming weeks. Stripe's own framing arrived in a letter to investors that described 1 January 2026 as the beginning of the singularity, a phrase Patrick Collison has since acknowledged is overworked.
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