The Next Web

Stripe reportedly to buy OpenRouter for $7B+

Stripe has acquired AI platform OpenRouter, combining Stripe’s payments scale with OpenRouter’s model‑routing and usage‑based billing infrastructure. Stripe did not disclose terms; media reports vary from roughly $7B (Bloomberg/TechCrunch) to $7.5B (NYT, including $1.5B to founders) and exceed $8B in some coverage—below earlier talks near $10B and implying about a 50× multiple on OpenRouter’s annualized revenue (~$140M). Founded in 2023, OpenRouter routes calls across 400+ third‑party models, automates model selection by cost, speed and performance, handles ~55 trillion tokens per week, charges an ~5.5% platform fee, serves millions of developers and offers tools like Ori Eval. It raised $113M in a May Series B at ~ $1.3B valuation and will operate independently after closing, extending Stripe’s move into AI orchestration and usage‑based billing.

Airbnb tests AI search, says AI speeds product delivery

Airbnb told investors that AI is accelerating its product development and is beginning tests of an AI-powered search feature. CEO Brian Chesky said AI has reduced time from concept to launch by up to 60% and increased shipped features by nearly 80% compared with the same six months a year earlier. The company uses AI across search, sign-up, checkout, payments and host onboarding, and has expanded an AI customer-support bot (launched in North America in 2025) to over 50 languages. About 45% of issues that start with the AI agent are resolved without human intervention, lowering support cost per booking by 16% year‑over‑year. Airbnb reported Q2 revenue of $3.6 billion (up 17% YoY) and adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion (up 21%).

OpenAI improves GPT-5.6 in ChatGPT, expands free access

OpenAI expanded its GPT‑5.6 family across ChatGPT, moving Free and Go users from GPT‑5.5 to GPT‑5.6 Luna (becoming the default) and rolling out unlimited text chats plus a Think button for deeper reasoning next week. Plus and Pro subscribers receive GPT‑5.6 Sol in Chat immediately; Sol delivers more focused, factually reliable answers, supports Instant and advanced queries, and includes a slider to tune reasoning depth. Internal evaluations found responses with at least one factual error were about 62% less common for Luna and 68% less common for Sol versus GPT‑5.5 Instant. The staged July global rollout involved voluntary security coordination with the U.S. government. Researchers demonstrated agentic misuse risks in tests; OpenAI highlighted safety training, age‑based guardrails, abuse‑prevention, and noted limits on uploads/tools for free users. ChatGPT reportedly has over 900 million weekly active users.