Stripe acquires OpenRouter for $7.5 billion to consolidate AI model routing infrastructure

According to TechCrunch, citing New York Times sources, Stripe confirmed acquisition of OpenRouter for $7.5 billion, a significant increase from the startup's $1.3 billion valuation in May. Stripe founders' internal letter to investors, published and verified by TechCrunch, frames the acquisition as positioned for the emerging agentic AI infrastructure layer. OpenRouter provides prompt routing between multiple AI models, competing with similar services as enterprises scale agent deployments across heterogeneous model infrastructure.