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Stripe pays $7B for OpenRouter; China ships 97% of global humanoids
The infrastructure layers are shifting: payment rails are merging with AI routing, humanoids are moving from demo to deployment, and the cost curves in semiconductors and machine learning are bending in unexpected directions.
Stripe Acquires OpenRouter for $7 Billion, Pivots Into AI Infrastructure
Stripe just bought OpenRouter for $7 billion, a startup that routes API calls between different AI models and handles the payments for each transaction. Most payments analysts had never heard of it a month ago. The deal isn't about AI hype; it's about owning the plumbing that connects merchants, models, and money. OpenRouter acts like a universal switchboard—developers send one request and it routes to the best model for the job, whether that's OpenAI, Anthropic, or a dozen others. If AI becomes the next major digital economy, Stripe wants to be the bank and the toll booth, processing every micro-transaction that flows through the system.
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