Stripe agrees to buy New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to investors (Erin Griffith/New York Times)

<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/business/stripe-openrouter-ai.html"><img align="RIGHT" border="0" hspace="4" src="http://www.techmeme.com/260819/i39.jpg" vspace="4" /></a> <p><a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260819/p39#a260819p39" title="Techmeme permalink"><img height="12" src="http://www.techmeme.com/img/pml.png" style="border: none; padding: 0; margin: 0;" width="11" /></a> Erin Griffith / <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a>:<br /> <span style="font-size: 1.3em;"><b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/business/stripe-openrouter-ai.html">Stripe agrees to buy New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to investors</a></b></span>&nbsp; &mdash;&nbsp; The deal is significant for the artificial intelligence industry, uniting Stripe's payments business with OpenRouter's helping businesses direct their spending on A.I. models.</p>