Stripe is paying $10 billion for OpenRouter’s 5.5% fee, not its LLM routing 🤖💸; Revolut is officially worth $115 billion on a loan book it hasn’t built yet 🤯🏦

FinTech & AI is Eating the World, 27 July

Hey Everyone,

Good morning & happy Monday! Today, we’re diving into payments giant Stripe, which is now in talks to buy OpenRouter for a whopping $10 billion (what this M&A is all about, why it’s very strategic for Stripe, & how it differs from Ramp’s LLM routing approach + bonus deep dive into the AI Monopoly Playbook, and How to Build an Agentic OS with Claude Fable 5 inside), and Revolut that’s now officially worth $115 billion, thus making it the 8th most valuable bank in Europe (why it matters, where’s the biggest risk & opportunity for Revolut + bonus deep dives into Revolut, Monzo, and Starling’s latest financials, and Revolut’s Foundation AI Model inside). So let’s jump straight into the fascinating stuff 🌶️

Stripe is paying $10 billion for OpenRouter’s 5.5% fee, not its LLM routing 🤖💸

The BIG News 🔥 FinTech giant Stripe is currently in talks to buy OpenRouter for around $10 billion, roughly eight times the $1.3 billion valuation the AI model marketplace carried in May 😳 And everyone who covered the deal so far framed it as a payments company buying the routing layer for AI. OpenRouter’s own pricing page says otherwise.

Let’s take a closer look at this to understand what this M&A is actually all about - the 5.5% fee that is OpenRouter’s entire revenue line, why Stripe’s own AI Gateway couldn’t get there, how Ramp is running the identical product in reverse, and the one number that tells you whether $10 billion is smart.