Stripe didn’t really buy OpenRouter because of the ‘singularity’

A payments company has acquired a startup that routes prompts between different AI models for $7.5 billion, a massive jump from its $1.3 billion valuation three months prior. The founders joked in a leaked letter that they made the purchase based on the "singularity," though they were being tongue-in-cheek about an economic shift driven by AI rather than a literal merger of humans and technology. The acquisition signals a strategic move into expense management for AI costs, positioning the payments company to gain insight into how developers use AI models and potentially influence the AI suppliers themselves. This represents an expansion beyond the company's traditional focus on collecting payments into managing the costs businesses incur when using AI services.