Stripe has been making big moves lately: at the beginning of the month, they launched the OUSD stablecoin alliance; mid-month, rumors surfaced about teaming up with PE firms to acquire PayPal; and now, towards the end of the month, news broke about their plans to acquire OpenRouter. Stripe handles a massive amount of internet transaction traffic, while OpenRouter deals with AI 'token traffic.' After the acquisition, Stripe could directly tap into AI consumption metering, routing, and real-time settlement, integrating 'AI spending' into its ecosystem—essentially building a closed-loop infrastructure from payments to AI. Gotta admire OpenRouter founder Alex Atallah's decisiveness when it comes to exits: As the co-founder and CTO of OpenSea, he left OpenSea at the end of 2022; Founded OpenRouter at the start of 2023, and now he's already selling OpenRouter.