The payments behemoth’s acquisition of the AI spend management firm has been in the works for weeks. The reported price tag: $7.5 billion.

Collison described tokens as “the central currency for companies building with AI, and it’s clear that the real-world economic potential will depend on making good use of scarce compute resources.”

To that end, Stripe is acquiring a leading gateway for AI-directed traffic. OpenRouter processes more than 10 trillion tokens daily from about 10 million software developers and companies, OpenRouters’ co-founders wrote Wednesday in a blog posting. The company charges a 5.5% fee for users’ credit purchases.

OpenRouter has “seen at least 10x growth” for large language model volume every year since its 2023 founding, according to the post by CEO and founder Alex Atallah and his co-founders, Chief Operating Officer Chris Clark and Louis Vichy.

“There are few companies on earth we would have considered selling to; our mission, our neutrality, and our lead in the market make the story for independence strong,” they wrote. “We would only join a company if we thought we could do more together, faster, without compromising any of them.”

The Stripe spokesperson also declined to comment on how many employees OpenRouter has or whether any job cuts are expected as part of the transaction.

Beyond Stripe’s experience operating large networks and global financial infrastructure, OpenRouter’s founders wrote that Stripe will also help them manage fraud and abuse, “something we believe will only become more challenging for AI companies to address.”

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