AI Quick Tips 381: Stripe + OpenRouter = profit?

If you haven’t heard, Stripe, the economic infrastructure company, purchased OpenRouter, the AI model and agent infrastructure company (one of them anyway).

It’s likely old news by now.

Either way, this leads to so many questions -

• Why OpenRouter?
• Why now?
• Why did they pay 5x more than OpenRouter’s last valuation?
• Are they going to change what’s working?
• So many more…

I don’t have answers to any of these questions. I’m going along for the ride like everyone else. I like to think that this is a positive move. OpenRouter likely won’t have to worry about raising money anymore and I think that this legitimizes the platform.

It will be interesting to see how people respond to some of the AI models that are offered by OpenRouter. Most people haven’t used AI tools at all, and those that have stick to the big names - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, maybe Microsoft. OpenRouter has all kinds of models from companies around the world.

I feel like this story will lead to follow-up posts when more information is available.

Until then…

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