Stripe Wants To Buy Everything

Stripe was in talks to buy OpenRouter for as much as $10B while still chasing PayPal. Midjourney bought astrology app Co-Star, Meta launched Facebook Verified and a standalone Seller app, and Nvidia and Microsoft defended open-weight AI. Sources: Stripe is in talks to acquire OpenRouter, which helps developers use AI models and could fetch ~$10B; PitchBook: OpenRouter was valued at $1.3B in May (WSJ) Sources: Stripe and Advent's unsolicited $53B PayPal offer, backed by ~$50B in committed bank financing, would create a payments giant processing ~$3.7T annually; PayPal has not responded (Reuters) Midjourney bought astrology app Co-Star, which uses AI to offer personalized advice, in the spring and is building its first standalone image-generation app (Bloomberg) Meta launches Facebook Verified, a free program it says will verify that users are real humans by analyzing a facial recognition selfie and assigning badges (Engadget) Meta launches Seller, a free standalone app version of Facebook Marketplace; Seller includes AI features that scan photos to fill out listings automatically (NYT) Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, a16z, and others sign a letter defending open-source AI; Jensen Huang, in his first X post, says open models strengthen cybersecurity (The Information) Signatories including Palantir avoid naming China or Moonshot in the open-weight letter, framing it instead around US AI leadership being judged by a strong open ecosystem, not one frontier model (Bloomberg) Longreads Meet All The Middle Aged Women Who Don't Exist: AI-generated wellness influencers, all gorgeous and all "57", are selling NMN supplements to women over 40 (Charlotte's Book) Big US pizza delivery chains are struggling as DoorDash and Uber Eats give independent pizzerias greater market access, erasing the tech moat chains once had (FT) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.