Real world economic potential of tokens will depend on efficient usage of scarce compute resources, Stripe’s Patrick Collison said.
After weeks of speculation, Stripe has announced that it is acquiring New York-based AI marketplace OpenRouter.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but recent reports suggest the acquisition would cost Stripe between $7bn and $10bn – dramatically higher than the $1.3bn valuation OpenRouter hit after a $113m round a few months ago.
Stripe said the acquisition will improve its services that help businesses optimise token costs – something it has undertaken over the past year. It is also gaining a user-base of more than 10m OpenRouter users globally.
Token optimisation is difficult, Stripe explained. “The sheer matrix of variables – which model to use for which tasks, at which speed and at what price – makes managing cost-versus-performance trade-offs in real time extremely difficult,” it said in a statement announcing the acquisition.
