If this is the case, I'll be moving somewhere else.

Where?

Is Stripe that bad?

I don't know where. Monopolies, buyouts by big companies like that just stifle competition.

Why would Stripe want to buy OpenRouter except to lock down the payment processor of a popular and potentially quite large customer if AI doesn't crash somehow?

I mean there's skimming the free training data from the "free" models but surely that's not their primary intention.

Locking down the payment processor can never be a good thing for customers.

> Why would Stripe want to buy OpenRouter except to lock down the payment processor

To become an API processor in addition to a payment processor. To take a cut of token dollars like they take a cut of payment dollars. To get investors excited for the IPO because AI.