Stripe buys OpenRouter for $7.5B
Stripe is buying OpenRouter. OpenRouter gives developers one way to use many AI models: one API, one credit balance, one bill. Stripe announced the agreement on 19 August 2026 without disclosing a price; The New York Times reports about $7.5B — roughly 54 times OpenRouter’s $140M of annualised revenue. A year ago that revenue was about $5M.
OpenRouter’s valuation at each funding round and at the sale
Post-money valuation at each round, then the agreed sale. OpenRouter was founded in 2023; annualised revenue grew from about $5M in July 2025 to about $140M in July 2026. Hover a point for the round details.
Source: Dealroom.co
OpenRouter was founded in 2023 by Alex Atallah and Louis Vichy. Both had founded companies before.
Who founded OpenRouter
The two founders and what they did previously. Photos and career records from Dealroom people profiles.
PreviouslyCo-founded NFT marketplace OpenSea in 2017 and was its CTO until 2022. Before that, an engineer at Palantir and Apple; studied computer science at Stanford.
PreviouslyCo-founded Plasmo, an open-source framework for building browser extensions, and the robotics platform RosHub. Before that, an engineer at Intuit.
COO Chris Clark, co-founder and long-time CTO of Grove Collaborative, joined in 2025 and also holds a co-founder title. Source: Dealroom.co
Dealroom estimates the founders still owned more than half of the company at the sale.
Who owns OpenRouter at the sale
Dealroom’s estimate of ownership and proceeds at a $7.5B price. Founders and staff together would receive about $4.9B before tax and deal terms.
Dealroom estimates.
Split by investor, the earliest money multiplied most. Every investor is in the money at this price.
Money in and estimated money out, by investor
Each bubble is an estimated ticket, placed at its round; the green bubble is Dealroom’s estimate of that investor’s gross proceeds at a $7.5B sale. On this model, a $700K angel cheque in the seed returns about $94M.
Dealroom estimates.
Set against other AI and software acquisitions of 2025 and 2026, the OpenRouter multiple is near the top of the range.
Revenue multiples on recent AI and software acquisitions
Price divided by revenue at announcement, deals announced 2025–2026. Stripe’s roughly 54 times sits above Nvidia–Groq (40×) and Google–Wiz (32×); the era’s largest deal, xAI’s $60B Cursor purchase, closed at 15 times. The bubble view plots the multiple against each company’s last reported revenue growth.
Source: Dealroom.co