A mysterious new AI model called Ox Alpha has driven certain corners of the internet into a frenzy of speculation about who actually built it. The free model was released on OpenRouter on Thursday, where it was described as “a reasoning model designed for coding, sustained agentic work, and production workload.” On X, Stripe CEO
Stripe confirmed on Wednesday that it was buying OpenRouter. While the company didn’t disclose the deal price, sources told the New York Times that it paid $7.5 billion. That’s a huge step up from OpenRouter’s $1.3 billion valuation in May. To put that price in context, the founders alone will reportedly receive $1.5 billion from the
