Source: Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Stripe is positioning itself as an intermediary layer in AI infrastructure, betting that the market will fragment across multiple models rather than consolidate around a single dominant one. In that scenario, routing requests to the optimal model by cost, speed, or capability becomes defensible business. The move inverts the typical SaaS model—instead of building proprietary models or depending on a single supplier like OpenAI, Stripe extracts value from orchestration and neutrality, much as it did in payments by sitting between merchants and multiple banking rails. The acquisition only makes sense if Stripe believes model commoditization is accelerating and developers will increasingly demand optionality over lock-in. That would require Stripe to prove it can capture economic rents from being the trusted intermediary in a fragmented market.