Payments firm Stripe to buy marketplace OpenRouter in AI push

Payments firm Stripe to buy marketplace OpenRouter in AI push

Payments firm Stripe to buy marketplace OpenRouter in AI push

Photo illustration of a Stripe logo

Aditya Soni and Arasu Kannagi Basil

Wed, August 19, 2026 at 8:36 PM GMT+3 2 min read

• STRI.PVT

By Aditya Soni and Arasu Kannagi Basil

Aug 19 (Reuters) - Payments firm Stripe said on Wednesday it had agreed to buy OpenRouter, which helps businesses ‌route and optimize token usage, its latest bet on the fast-growing AI industry.

While ‌the companies did not disclose the value of the deal, a source familiar with the matter, who ​requested anonymity to discuss confidential information, told Reuters it was worth slightly more than $8 billion.

The deal comes as soaring bills drive companies toward cheaper models and routing tools like OpenRouter, and deepens a year-long push by the fintech into AI. The push has included launching ‌products like token billing to ⁠track AI model consumption.

AI marketplace platforms like OpenRouter allow developers to send queries to dozens of AI models through a single interface, ⁠making them a popular testing ground for new systems.

"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," Stripe CEO Patrick Collison ​said.

Stripe declined to comment on the ‌purchase price, while OpenRouter did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

OpenRouter, which was founded in 2023, processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day from more than 400 AI models for a community of over 10 million developers and companies.

A Deloitte report in March found that most surveyed companies with annual revenue of at least $500 ‌million expect to consume more than 10 billion ​tokens per month by 2028.

OpenRouter has raised capital ​from heavyweights such as Menlo Ventures ​and Andreessen Horowitz. In May, the firm raised $113 million in a ‌funding round led by Alphabet's independent growth ​fund CapitalG.

Stripe, which was ​valued at $159 billion in a tender offer earlier this year, has made a joint offer with private equity firm Advent International to buy PayPal for more ​than $53 billion, Reuters reported ‌last month.

Businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume last year, a ​34% jump from 2024.

(Reporting by Aditya Soni, Arasu Kannagi Basil and Prakhar ​Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)