Stripe Weighs $10 Billion OpenRouter Acquisition

Stripe, the digital-payments infrastructure company valued at $159 billion in 2026, has been pushing into AI infrastructure and stablecoin payments as it looks beyond its core business. San Francisco-based OpenRouter, founded in 2023, operates a marketplace that lets developers access, compare and switch among more than 400 proprietary and open-weight models from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. The companies already work together, with OpenRouter using Stripe to collect customer payments, giving a potential acquisition clear strategic overlap.

The Wall Street Journal reported on July 23, 2026, that Stripe was in talks to acquire OpenRouter in a transaction potentially worth close to $10 billion. An agreement could be announced soon, though negotiations may still fail and rival bidders could emerge. OpenRouter raised $113 million in a CapitalG-led Series B in May at a valuation of about $1.3 billion, after being valued at an estimated $547 million a year earlier. A deal near the reported price would lift its value almost eightfold in roughly two months.