Stripe’s latest acquisition venture could soon land a deal to secure the services of OpenRouter which would complement its recent AI investments.
Stripe is reportedly on the verge of completing the acquisition of AI software provider OpenRouter for $10bn.
According to people familiar with the deal as cited by the Wall Street Journal, the acquisition could be finalised soon, though a threat remains it could still fall through and other suitors could show their interest in OpenRouter.
The Wall Street Journal also revealed several unnamed big tech companies have looked at potential deals to acquire OpenRouter.
OpenRouter was founded in 2023 by co-founders Alex Atallah, also the co-founder of NFT marketplace OpenSea, and Louis Vichy, co-founder of browser extension service Plasma.
Operating a unified API gateway and model router for large language models (LLMs), OpenRouter acts as an AI software provider for businesses to adopt AI models such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
The company uses requests formats to enable companies to switch from different AI models by using specific codes. The model router used by OpenRouter allows limited downtime or hits rate limits to maintain uptimes.
OpenRouter has also begun adopting payment capabilities that are supported by the AI models it services, which includes a partnership with Stripe to offer a crypto payment API which supports on-chain payments on blockchain networks like Ethereum, Polygon and Coinbase’s Base network.
Another AI success story?
The $10bn price attached to OpenRouter is indicative of the company and the AI industry’s growth that has big tech, private equity and traditional finance firms investing significantly.
A report from S&P Global in May 2026 revealed the 589 AI-related deals that were closed in 2025 was an increase from the 375 deals settled in 2024, a 57% year-over-year increase.
While software companies (1,183) were unsurprisingly the overwhelming largest investors in AI-related companies, the fintech sector has grown in merger and acquisition (M&A) AI deals in recent years.
According to the report, 68 fintech and data companies accounted for all AI-related M&A deals from 2021-2025. Fintech and data firms were the second largest acquirers of AI companies in terms of percentage of total deals over the last four years, representing 15% of all AI-related company deals in 2025.
OpenRouter will likely be of interest to Stripe not only due to its past partnership, but also complementing the payment processor’s investment into AI.
Stripe collaborated with OpenAI to develop the Agentic Commerce Protocol designed to deliver new standards for the usage of agentic payments. It was deployed into OpenAI’s ChatGPT to allow users to select payment prompts after receiving shopping recommendations of merchants and businesses.
OpenRouter would feasibly allow Stripe merchants and clients to switch seamlessly from OpenAI to Anthropic depending on which AI model they prefer or for what agentic payment capabilities they have to offer.
Stripe’s M&A strategy continues
Not content with placing its investment into AI, Stripe has been an active M&A player which has seen the company show an interest in acquiring PayPal.
Reports emerged in recent weeks that Stripe is interested in acquiring PayPal for $53bn, absorbing PayPal’s plethora of digital and consumer wallet services to potentially create a $3.7trn payments giant.
Despite lodging its bid, PayPal has reportedly rejected Stripe’s offer as the company believes it to be ‘inadequate’.
Recent acquisitions from Stripe over the past several years includes billing orchestration platform Metronome for $1bn in January 2026, stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1bn in 2024, and recurring payment firm Lemon Squeezy in 2024 for an undisclosed fee.
