Stripe's $7B OpenRouter Buy & the AI Token Wars

Payments giant becomes the central hub for AI model access—and it's reshaping the entire economy. Stripe just acquired OpenRouter for over $7 billion, positioning itself as the central marketplace for AI model access and reshaping how developers pay for computation. Meanwhile, Alibaba's Qwen3.6-27B is crushing larger competitors, and Anthropic investors are already whispering valuations north of $3 trillion by 2026.