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AI & Enterprise

Why payment company Stripe is betting big on OpenRouter

After months of takeover talk, reports say Stripe has agreed to buy AI inference routing service OpenRouter for more than $8 billion. OpenRouter connects developers and companies to multiple AI models through a single API and interface. Bankless writer David Christopher said the deal can be viewed through the lens of growing payment demand from AI agents. OpenRouter charges a 5.5 percent fee when users top up credits and had annualised revenue of about $140 million as of late July.

Telecommunications & Media

Popular channels used for MPP bundling; cable operators lack means to refuse

Rules governing channel transactions premised on cable operators\' dominance do not fit current market conditions, a seminar heard. Some large multi-programme providers use popular channels to push bundled deals, leaving operators unable to drop only unwanted channels, analysts said. A professor argued guidelines banning forced bundling are not working in practice and called for recognising refusal of individual contracts as grounds to end a channel. Lawyers also urged assessing bargaining power case by case.

Crypto

Circle releases USDC spec for machine payments protocol, targeting AI agent payments

Circle has released an official USDC payment specification for the Machine Payments Protocol, standardising how AI agents and automated services pay in USDC on EVM-compatible blockchains and Solana. The spec introduces a standard payment interface, adds MPP’s first crosschain payment profile via Circle Gateway and includes support for USDCx, a Stacks-based USDC-linked stablecoin. The announcement did not include user numbers, volumes or adoption metrics.