Stripe announced on Wednesday its plan to acquire the startup OpenRouter, marking a significant move by the payments giant to expand into the artificial intelligence model marketplace. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though sources familiar with the matter indicate the transaction is valued at approximately $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion of that allocated to OpenRouter's founders.

This acquisition comes less than three months after OpenRouter raised $113 million at a valuation of around $1.3 billion. OpenRouter has gained strong traction among developers who work with AI models, particularly those that are considered open-source and freely accessible. In a blog post detailing the deal, Stripe noted that it had been collaborating with the company to "optimize token costs and route tokens efficiently," referring to the metric used to measure AI model usage.

Stripe highlighted the challenge of managing AI expenses relative to performance, citing the rapid pace of model releases and repricing in the industry. The company has established itself as one of the most valuable startups globally, with a valuation approaching $160 billion earlier this year, driven largely by its ubiquitous online payment technology. Last year, Stripe bolstered its presence in the cryptocurrency sector by acquiring the stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion.

The AI market, however, represents a far larger and faster-growing opportunity. In a statement, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said, "Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI, and together with OpenRouter, we will help businesses maximize profitability by intelligently routing requests and using tokens efficiently." OpenRouter, in its own blog post, expressed that joining forces with Stripe will advance its overarching vision of "building a healthy AI ecosystem where diverse models thrive, diversity in AI becomes an advantage, and breakthrough labs or inference providers can reach millions of developers without any single model becoming the default due to inertia."