[AINews] Stripe buys OpenRouter for $7B
Stripe acquires OpenRouter for $7B, validating model routing as high-margin AI infrastructure
“it was generating $100 million in annualized gross profit”
Stripe closed a $7B acquisition of OpenRouter, the model-routing platform processing 250 trillion tokens per month at a 70% gross margin — a 5x volume increase in six months. The deal signals that value in the AI stack is accruing to the routing and orchestration layer rather than GPU infrastructure or frontier model labs. At ~50x revenue, the multiple reflects investor conviction that developer distribution (8M users) plus near-software-level economics makes routing infrastructure a durable wedge.