OpenSea

Stripe reportedly to buy OpenRouter for $7B+

Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, the 2023 model‑routing startup co‑founded by Alex Atallah, combining Stripe’s payments scale with OpenRouter’s model‑routing and usage‑based billing infrastructure. Terms were not disclosed; media reports range roughly $7B–$8B+ (some outlets cite ~$7.5B including founder payouts), below earlier ~$10B talks and implying about a 50× multiple on OpenRouter’s annualized revenue (~$140M). OpenRouter routes calls across 400+ third‑party models, automates model selection by cost/speed/performance, handles ~55 trillion tokens/week, charges an approximate 5.5% platform fee, serves millions of developers and provides tools like Ori Eval. It raised $113M in a May Series B at ~ $1.3B valuation (>$150M total raised) and will operate independently after closing, deepening Stripe’s AI orchestration and usage‑based billing capabilities. Reporting cites anonymous cap‑table sources and notes investor Anjney Midha backed the team in 2025 (page metadata: 2026‑08‑20).

Evolution of Non‑Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

This Dev.to article traces the history and development of non‑fungible tokens (NFTs), describing four stages: the Colored Coins precursor (2012–2013); the 2014 Quantum artwork by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash often cited as the first NFT; the 2015–2017 expansion driven by Ethereum, smart contracts, projects like CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties, and the ERC‑721 standard (2017); and mainstream adoption from 2018 onward with marketplaces such as OpenSea. The piece lists current NFT use cases (art, music royalties, gaming assets, virtual real estate, identity, IP protection) and notes challenges like market volatility and environmental concerns. The author also mentions a hackathon project, Afyachain, applying NFTs to decentralized patient data.

Noscroll launches AI bot to do your doomscrolling

Noscroll, a new consumer startup, launched an AI-powered agent that reads social feeds, news sites and other online sources and sends users curated news digests via text. Built by Nadav Hollander (previously CTO at OpenSea) with an open-source developer known as @z0age, the service lets users connect their X account and other sources, specify topics to follow or ignore, and receive summaries at configurable cadences. Noscroll uses off-the-shelf AI models running on the company’s proprietary infrastructure, pulls from X, news sites, Reddit, Hacker News, Substack and research papers, and supports conversational follow-ups. The bot debuted publicly in late April 2026, offers a free sample digest and a $9.99/month subscription, and reportedly has attracted user adoption and inbound investor interest.