Stripe buys OpenRouter for more than $8 billion, says the private model is more suited to the “era of singularity,” and the IPO may be delayed

Comparing news, according to Axios, payment giant Stripe said in a letter to investors that January 1 marks “the beginning of a singularity”, sees it as a major inflection point in a long-term trend, and believes that maintaining a private structure is most suitable for this critical moment, and the IPO may continue to be put on hold. The company said that in the first half of the year, revenue increased 41% year over year and free cash flow increased 43%; 88% of Forbes AI 50 companies (including OpenAI and Anthropic) built on their platforms, and the share of revenue from AI and crypto companies has more than doubled year over year.

Stripe also confirmed the acquisition of the AI routing platform OpenRouter. The transaction consideration was not publicly disclosed. Axios received more than $8 billion and was mainly paid in shares. Stripe says maintaining private ownership will help advance mergers and acquisitions and long-term investments without diluting shareholders. Its share capital is lower than three years ago, and the compound annual return on share prices since Series D has been around 31%. According to the company, total platform payments reached 1.9 trillion US dollars in 2025, an increase of 34% over the previous year; the employee share acquisition in February this year was valued at about $159 billion. There are also reports that Stripe is discussing a $53 billion takeover of PayPal with Advent International.