Nvidia Lost OpenRouter to Stripe, Then Closed $140B in Deals
TL;DR
- Nvidia told OpenRouter in July it would compete but needed more time to evaluate; the founder would not wait, and Stripe closed for more than $8B.
- In the following two months, Nvidia finalized over $140B in transactions, anchored by a $105B credit facility supporting OpenAI's Pike County, Ohio data center.
- Nvidia is now in talks on a $10B investment in humanoid-robotics firm Figure, with Hugging Face and Perplexity cited as further prospects.
In July, Nvidia told OpenRouter it was interested in competing for the three-year-old AI-model marketplace but needed more time to evaluate, The Information reported. OpenRouter's founder was unwilling to wait. Stripe closed the deal for more than $8 billion in cash and stock, and Nvidia never submitted a formal offer.
The miss did not slow the chipmaker's deal flow. Over the following two months, Nvidia finalized transactions totaling more than $140 billion, including a $105 billion credit facility backing OpenAI's planned Pike County, Ohio data-center campus, developed by SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy. Its equity investment portfolio now approaches $100 billion in market value.
OpenRouter is, per the reporting, "a popular marketplace for AI models, including many cheaper open-source ones." Databricks had also been talking to the startup before Stripe closed.
The same reporting places Nvidia in discussions for a $10 billion investment in humanoid-robotics firm Figure, with Hugging Face and Perplexity cited as further targets on its list. It is one more thread in a run of Nvidia deal stories we've been tracking across the past 90 days.
Originally reported by theinformation.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Nvidia Prepared Last-Minute OpenRouter Counter-Bid But Lost to Stripe's $8B Deal