Stripe has spent billions acquiring Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform for $1.1 billion in February 2025, Metronome, a usage-based billing platform for roughly $1 billion in early 2026, and OpenRouter, an AI token router for $7 to $8 billion in August 2026. The group also unsuccessfully attempted to acquire PayPal for over $53 billion with Advent International. Stablecoin payment volumes on the platform nearly doubled to approximately $400 billion in 2025, with 60% of those transactions occurring between businesses. With a valuation of $159 billion and $1.9 trillion in total payment volume for 2025, Stripe aims to control the financial infrastructure of both traditional commerce and the emerging AI economy.
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