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.com/tech/ai/stripe-in-talks-to-buy-buzzy-a…) (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.com/business/finance/stripe-advent-off…) (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.com/news/articles/2026-07-24/ai-star…) (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.com/2222353/meta-launches-facebook-ve…) (Engadget)

• Meta launches Seller, a free standalone app version of Facebook Marketplace; Seller includes AI features that scan photos to fill out listings automatically (nytimes.com/2026/07/24/technology/meta-faceboo…) (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 (theinformation.com/briefings/meta-microsoft-nv…) (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.com/news/articles/2026-07-24/nvidia-…) (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 (charlottesbook.com/p/meet-all-the-middle-aged-…) (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.com/content/d10e846e-5615-4cb5-bd4f-b159423…) (FT)

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