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I wonder if this deal is primarily just to buy payment volume. OpenAI just announced earlier this week that Ayden would become their payment provider (when it

by alberth 1mo ago

I wonder if this deal is primarily just to buy payment volume. OpenAI just announced earlier this week that Ayden would become their payment provider (when it was previously Stripe). And OpenRouter has a large percentage of overall AI payment volume for all the major labs. Both OpenAI and OpenRouter represent ~$100B in payment volume, whereas Stripe in total doing ~$2T. Two customer doing ~5% of your total volume who didn’t even exist a few years ago, must be kind of scary for Stripe. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/rise-ai-shopping-pushes-merchants-protect-loyalty-adyen-says-2026-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/rise-ai-sho... https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-2025-update https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-2025-update

sixdimensional 1mo ago
Maybe it might also have to do with AI agent wallets and getting deeper in to the agent-based transactional business?
tyre 1mo ago
Stripe would lock in volume but how exactly are they monetizing that? Any margin the get from OpenRouter is money extracted from OpenRouter’s revenue (which is now theirs.)
- giancarlostoro 1mo ago
  7 billion one off for 100 billion annually? If I am understanding that correctly it feels like a no brainer to me… Also if you think about it differently… OpenRouter is adjacent to what Stripe is but for getting access to AI models. If they dont mess this up they could invest in openerouter and grow that 100b pie.
  - notatoad 1mo ago
    $100b is payment volume, not revenue. Stripe gross revenue from those payments would be on the order of tenths of a percent of that.
    - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
      Plus the platform fee that OpenRouter makes? 5 billion a year?
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
      - jjfoooo4 1mo ago
        Feels like a cost you’ll pay when you’re trying different stuff out and want to play with different models, but as soon as companies start wanting to cost optimize the 5% middleman is an easy one to cut out.
- sanxiyn 1mo ago
  I think volume is itself good and help Stripe negotiate lower rate with banks etc.
sparkling 1mo ago
>OpenRouter represent ~$100B in payment volume, whereas Stripe in total doing ~$2T. That is a much higher % than i expected.
- everfrustrated 1mo ago
  Just SpaceXAI alone is currently doing ~$10B annualized AI revenue numbers (based on last Q results). So that seems reasonable.
bhouston 1mo ago
> Two customer doing ~5% of your total volume who didn’t even exist a few years ago, must be kind of scary for Stripe. Shopify uses Stripe no? Probably good volume discount though.
Marciplan 1mo ago
Adyen*
huflungdung 1mo ago
[dead]
chr-s 1mo ago
Adyen just bought Orb [0], a usage-based billing company, for $335M, specifically so they could position themselves as the payments choice for AI companies. [0] https://www.withorb.com/ https://www.withorb.com/
hrududuu 1mo ago
OpenAI is a large company, and large companies go multi processor for payments. I would check the press release carefully, and see if you can confirm that Adyen is taking all of OpenAI's volume, or even a majority of it.
jimnotgym 1mo ago
And how much is so they can write 'AI' in their prospectus

by alberth 1mo ago

sixdimensional 1mo ago

Maybe it might also have to do with AI agent wallets and getting deeper in to the agent-based transactional business?

tyre 1mo ago

Stripe would lock in volume but how exactly are they monetizing that? Any margin the get from OpenRouter is money extracted from OpenRouter’s revenue (which is now theirs.)

giancarlostoro 1mo ago
7 billion one off for 100 billion annually? If I am understanding that correctly it feels like a no brainer to me… Also if you think about it differently… OpenRouter is adjacent to what Stripe is but for getting access to AI models. If they dont mess this up they could invest in openerouter and grow that 100b pie.
- notatoad 1mo ago
  $100b is payment volume, not revenue. Stripe gross revenue from those payments would be on the order of tenths of a percent of that.
  - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
    Plus the platform fee that OpenRouter makes? 5 billion a year?
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - jjfoooo4 1mo ago
      Feels like a cost you’ll pay when you’re trying different stuff out and want to play with different models, but as soon as companies start wanting to cost optimize the 5% middleman is an easy one to cut out.
sanxiyn 1mo ago
I think volume is itself good and help Stripe negotiate lower rate with banks etc.

sparkling 1mo ago

>OpenRouter represent ~$100B in payment volume, whereas Stripe in total doing ~$2T. That is a much higher % than i expected.

everfrustrated 1mo ago
Just SpaceXAI alone is currently doing ~$10B annualized AI revenue numbers (based on last Q results). So that seems reasonable.

bhouston 1mo ago

> Two customer doing ~5% of your total volume who didn’t even exist a few years ago, must be kind of scary for Stripe. Shopify uses Stripe no? Probably good volume discount though.

Marciplan 1mo ago

Adyen*

huflungdung 1mo ago

[dead]

chr-s 1mo ago

Adyen just bought Orb [0], a usage-based billing company, for $335M, specifically so they could position themselves as the payments choice for AI companies. [0] https://www.withorb.com/ https://www.withorb.com/

hrududuu 1mo ago

OpenAI is a large company, and large companies go multi processor for payments. I would check the press release carefully, and see if you can confirm that Adyen is taking all of OpenAI's volume, or even a majority of it.

jimnotgym 1mo ago

And how much is so they can write 'AI' in their prospectus