Stripe seems to appear to be attempting to compete with the US Federal Reserve as the core dollar payment processor while also dipping into the same for tokens. Core value exchange platform, dollars, tokens, whatever. A bit of a less exciting version of Dune. “The transaction volume must flow.”
superkuh•24m ago
Perhaps the US State Dept. used it's strong relationship with Stripe to encourage this purchase as a geopolitical move. They've done so before with companies like eBay and Microsoft to neuter the P2P telephone access network that was "Skype".
reilly3000•21m ago
Yea they love centralized brokers, exchanges, etc.
rvz•18m ago
This is even before them acquiring PayPal. If Stripe bought PayPal in 2022, it would be immediately blocked. Not this time.
One of the only near monopolies that is seemingly allowed and it is even praised.
But who cares. Nothing to see here (as long as AGI is coming it doesn't matter anyway).
jastanton•16m ago
Why would PayPal acquiring OpenRouter make it any more of a monopoly than it is? Not saying it is or isn't, but OpenRouter isn't even a financial company.
rvz•22s ago
I am saying it is a near monopoly as Stripe is the one that is close to acquiring PayPal in the first place. [0]
I still find it hilarious that AI is so bad you need something to sit in front of it to pick models for you. And that's a normal, accepted thing.
Gecko4072•5m ago
How can a middle man for api calls be worth so much? Their market share can’t be very large right? For comparison, $7B is more than market cap of Lyft, Dolby, and Alaska Airlines. What is happening?
zacharyozer•36m ago
Not sure I understand how this is strategically aligned for Stripe but certainly an interesting comparison.
closetheloopdev•25m ago
[1] https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/openrouter-and-stripe
toomuchtodo•24m ago
superkuh•24m ago
reilly3000•21m ago