Stripe's $8B OpenRouter Bet Signals Ireland's AI Infrastructure Ambitions as Startup Funding Gaps Persist

Stripe, Dublin and California-headquartered payments giant, confirmed its acquisition of AI marketplace OpenRouter for slightly more than $8 billion, its biggest AI play yet. The deal gives Stripe control over a platform processing over 10 trillion tokens per day from 400+ AI models, used by 10 million developers. This isn't Stripe dabbling in AI — it's building the tollbooth for AI commerce, betting that token routing becomes as critical as payment processing.

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