Payments company Stripe is discussing a plan to acquire AI model access startup OpenRouter for a price close to $10 billion, The Information reported on July 23, citing a source familiar with internal matters.
The report said the deal could be announced as soon as within a month, but negotiations could also fall apart.
OpenRouter is also known to have held early talks with Databricks about a sale, but The Information said it was not confirmed how those discussions turned out.
OpenRouter was valued at $1.3 billion in a previous funding round and has since drawn interest from several tech companies, the report said.
If Stripe acquires OpenRouter, which helps developers access hundreds of AI models, it will be able to guide corporate customers to the cheapest model or the one best suited to a task. Stripe processes billions of transactions for corporate clients.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr