今天,我们激动地宣布,我们将与 Stripe 联手,共同推动全球 GDP 的下一波增长浪潮。
OpenRouter 是首个也是规模最大的模型市场和网关。我们是发现和使用任何 AI 模型的最佳途径,提供统一接口、广泛的供应商选择、与模型无关的可观测性、成本管理,以及能够提升价格、性能和可用性的路由能力。目前,我们每天为超过 1000 万开发者和企业组成的社区处理来自 400 多个 AI 模型的 10 万亿以上 token。自成立以来,我们的推理量每年至少增长 10 倍。
我们想解释一下为什么决定与 Stripe 联手,以及这对数百万基于我们平台进行构建的开发者和企业意味着什么。
这对我们的用户意味着什么
OpenRouter 将继续照常运营:使命不变、名称不变、产品不变、路线图不变。如果你今天基于 OpenRouter 构建,你的集成方式不会有任何改变。
OpenRouter 存在的意义是让用户以平等的地位使用每一个模型,提供关于它们在市场中如何被使用的公开信号,帮助开发者将它们编排在一起,并让它们在规模化场景下可观测、可管理。这一承诺是我们运营方式的核心,它不会向任何模型、任何供应商或任何母公司妥协。这一承诺还延伸至不断增长的推理周边服务生态,包括 AI 原生网络搜索、上下文管理等,未来还会有更多。
路由决策将继续由一件事驱动:什么对用户最有利。
我们的使命
我们在 2023 年初创立 OpenRouter,源于一个简单的信念:智能将是多模型的。没有任何单一模型能赢得所有任务,前沿会快速演进。这种自由是整个行业的关键基础设施。AI 太重要了,它的未来不能由哪个单一模型先被嵌入来决定。AI 已成为美国经济增长的最大单一驱动力,而推理正迅速成为每家公司最大的成本项。
我们憧憬一个健康的 AI 生态系统:众多模型百花齐放,AI 的“神经多样性”成为一种优势,任何一家实验室或推理服务商只要取得突破,就能触达数百万开发者,而没有任何单一模型会因惯性而成为默认选择。
我们的使命就是实现这样的未来,这比什么都重要。与 Stripe 合作带来的机遇,让我们能够携手加速这一进程。
为什么选择 Stripe?
这个世界上值得我们考虑出售的公司屈指可数;我们的使命、我们的中立立场、以及我们在市场上的领先地位,都让“保持独立”成为一个极具说服力的故事。我们只会加入这样一家公司:我们认为与之携手能做得更多、更快,同时不牺牲上述任何一点。
Stripe 就是这样的公司。他们是全球最优秀的金融基础设施平台。他们的 API 树立了标准,此后所有开发者产品——包括我们自己的——都以它为标杆来衡量。这是两个靠实力赢得开发者选择的平台的结合,双方都拥有注重品质、规模、以及对建设者承诺的文化,在后 AGI 经济中,这两者都将依然不可或缺。
多年来,OpenRouter 一直被称为“LLM 领域的 Stripe”。两家公司拥有共同的基因:我们都把复杂的基础设施和市场动态抽象成令人愉悦的 API,我们都痴迷于 API 另一端的开发者和用户。企业信赖 Stripe 来优化其收入栈的每一个环节,涵盖支付方式、授权、风控等方方面面。开发者、客户、模型实验室和服务商则信赖 OpenRouter 在快速演进的生态系统中运营一个中立、可靠的中间层。
Stripe 带来了庞大的客户网络、关于互联网企业如何增长的数据,以及多年运营可信赖全球基础设施的经验。在管理欺诈和滥用方面,也没有人比他们更擅长——而我们相信,这只会成为 AI 公司越来越难以应对的挑战。如今,我们能够以单打独斗时无法达到的速度服务开发者。
接下来会发生什么
致我们的客户:谢谢你们。我们很荣幸能成为你们旅程的一部分,而这一切才刚刚开始。OpenRouter 的产品、使命和现有承诺均保持不变。加入 Stripe 能帮助我们更快地实现这些目标,而我们支持你们的能力只会不断提升。
致我们的员工:我们坚信,未来几年将是我们人生中最重要的时期,也是我们使命最重要的时期。我们深感荣幸,能够活在这个世界正在经历变革的时代,并且能与你们一同经历这一切。你们是世界上最聪慧、最具创造力、最充满好奇、最意志坚定的一群人,我们也很期待壮大团队,以创造更大的全球影响力。
致所有认同我们使命的人:欢迎加入我们。比起岗位匹配,更重要的是拥有我们的价值观:好奇心、严谨、主动性和透明度。AI 将改变企业的组织方式,OpenRouter 将在这方面大力创新。随着我们的成长,我们将不懈努力,保持今天这家 90 人初创公司的速度、敏捷、效率和人才密度。
—— Alex、Chris、Louis 及 OpenRouter 团队
本次交易需满足惯例交割条件。我们预计将在未来几周内完成交割。
Today, we are excited to announce that we are joining forces with Stripe, to power the next wave of GDP growth globally.
OpenRouter is the first and largest model marketplace and gateway. We are the best way to discover and use any AI model, with one interface, broad provider choice, model-agnostic observability, cost management, and routing that improves price, performance, and uptime. We now process 10+ trillion tokens per day from 400+ AI models for a community of over 10 million developers and companies. Since our founding, we have seen at least 10x growth in inference volume every year.
We want to explain why we made the decision to join forces with Stripe and what it means for the millions of developers and companies that build on us.
What this means for our users
OpenRouter will continue to operate as it is: same mission, same name, same product, same roadmap. If you build on OpenRouter today, nothing about your integration changes.
OpenRouter exists to give users every model on equal footing, provide open signals about how they’re used in the market, help developers orchestrate them together, and make them observable and manageable at scale. That commitment is core to how we operate, and it doesn’t bend to any model, any provider, or any parent company. It also extends to a growing ecosystem of inference-adjacent services, including AI-native web search, context management, and more to come.
Routing decisions will remain driven by one thing: what’s best for you, the user.
Our mission
We started OpenRouter in early 2023 on a simple belief: intelligence will be multi-model. No single model will win every task, and the frontier will move rapidly. That freedom is critical infrastructure for the industry. AI is too important for its future to be decided by whichever single model gets embedded first. AI has become the single largest driver of economic growth in the US, and inference is quickly becoming the largest line item for every company.
We envision a healthy AI ecosystem where many models thrive, where AI neurodiversity is a strength, where a lab or an inference provider with a breakthrough can reach millions of developers, and where no single model becomes the default by inertia.
Our mission is to realize this future, and it’s more important than anything else. The opportunity with Stripe allows us to accelerate it together.
Why Stripe?
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. We would only join a company if we thought we could do more together, faster, without compromising any of them.
Stripe is that company. They are the best financial infrastructure platform in the world. Their API set the standard that developer products, including ours, have been measured against ever since. This is a combination of two platforms that developers choose on merit, with cultures focused on quality, scale, and commitment to builders, and that will remain essential in a post-AGI economy.
For years, OpenRouter has been called “Stripe for LLMs.” Both companies share common DNA: we abstract complex infrastructure and market dynamics into delightful APIs, and we obsess over the developer and user on the other side of it. Businesses trust Stripe to optimize every part of their revenue stack, across payment methods, authorization, fraud, and more. Builders, customers, model labs, and providers trust OpenRouter to run a neutral, reliable layer across a fast-moving ecosystem.
Stripe brings a large customer network, data on how internet businesses grow, and years of experience running trusted global infrastructure. There is also no one better at managing fraud and abuse, something we believe will only become more challenging for AI companies to address. We can now serve developers at a pace we couldn’t reach alone.
What’s next
To our customers: Thank you. We’re honored to be part of your journey, and we’re just getting started. OpenRouter’s product, mission, and current commitments remain unchanged. Joining Stripe helps us pursue them faster, and our ability to support you will only improve.
To our employees: We firmly believe that the next few years will be the most important time of our lives, and the most important for our mission. We are so grateful to have the privilege of being alive during this transformation for the world, and that I get to do it with you. You are some of the most brilliant, creative, curious, and determined people there are, and we’re excited to grow our team for an even greater global impact.
To everyone else who believes in our mission: come join us. Fitting into a role isn’t as important as having our values: curiosity, rigor, agency, and transparency. AI will transform the way companies are organized, and OpenRouter will innovate significantly here. And as we grow, we will relentlessly aim to preserve the velocity, agility, efficiency, and talent density of the 90-person startup that we are today.
— Alex, Chris, Louis, and the OpenRouter team
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. We expect to close in the coming weeks.