Bloomberg reported on the 16th that U.S. online payment corporations Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, an artificial intelligence (AI) model brokerage platform, for more than $7 billion (about 9.91 trillion won). If the deal is finalized, it will be Stripe's largest merger and acquisition (M&A) since its founding in 2010. The two companies have not officially announced the transaction yet, and the final price could change.
Launched in 2023, OpenRouter helps developers use more than 500 AI models from over 80 corporations, including OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek, on a single consolidation network. There's no need to set up a separate account and application programming interface (API) for each model, allowing quick switches to the desired AI based on expense and performance. It also reduces vendor lock-in, earning the moniker "AI tollgate."
The revenue model takes about a 5% fee from AI usage charges paid through the platform. It has 10 million users worldwide, and monthly processed data reaches 200 trillion tokens. Research firm Sakra estimated annual sales at about $50 million. On the 5th, its valuation at the time of investment was $1.3 billion, meaning it jumped more than fivefold in just three months.
Stripe is a global payments processor that handled $1.9 trillion in payments last year. With this acquisition, it is seen as aiming to expand its business scope beyond funds settlement to the distribution network where AI model selection, usage measurement and billing take place.
The two companies had a partnership even before acquisition talks. In January this year, Stripe said it would support OpenRouter's global payments and subscription- and usage-based billing. In the same month, it completed the acquisition of Metronome, which handles complex metered billing. Earlier, in 2025, it acquired Bridge, a stablecoin payment infrastructure corporations, among other moves to secure the digital transaction infrastructure beyond payments.
As AI models surge, the valuations of corporations that compare and evaluate them are also rising. LM Arena, which pits two models' answers against each other anonymously, saw its valuation climb from $600 million in May last year to $1.7 billion in January this year. Artificial Analysis, which examines speed, performance and price, has also become a key industry benchmark.
However, there are concerns that brokerage and evaluation platforms could see weakened independence if folded into large payment corporations. Whether OpenRouter, which had shown actual usage trends of U.S. and Chinese AI models, can maintain objectivity and neutrality after the acquisition is considered a key factor in the transaction.