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Models2026-09-17 · source-backed
OpenRouter's model API lists stealth/union-alpha, created September 16 at 14:42 UTC, zero price on prompt and completion, 262,144-token context with 131,072 max completion tokens, text plus image input, tool calling and response_format supported, is_moderated false. Its own description claims "frontier-level performance" for "research, coding, and agentic workflows," lab unnamed. The r/singularity thread guesses Kimi, which is a guess. Free frontier-class inference with a 256K window and working tool support is a thing to evaluate now, since stealth listings have historically been pulled within days.
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It showed up August 20 with 1,048,576 tokens of context, 131,072 max output, and text, image and video input. Stripe's Patrick Collison called it "very impressive," no lab has claimed it, and speculation splits between Z.ai's GLM family, Microsoft's MAI and Xiaomi's MiMo. The...
August 6: Sapiom raised $35M for a router that sends each model call to the cheapest capable model. August 7: Databricks published its internal cost playbook. August 8: Toolport hit Product Hunt with a free MCP gateway cutting tool-definition overhead 96%. Three parties, zero...
OpenRouter listed stealth/ox-alpha on August 20 with a 1M context window, free pricing, and a single anonymous third-party provider, described as a reasoning model for coding, sustained agentic work, and text-plus-visual production workloads. OpenRouter is explicit that it isn...
TechCrunch strings together three deals: Nvidia's reported $13 billion Hugging Face acquisition, its $6 billion Poolside arrangement, and Stripe's acquisition of OpenRouter for over $7 billion about two weeks before August 28. The thesis is acquirers hedging against frontier-l...
Stripe's newsroom confirmed the deal on August 19, ending the rumor cycle Bloomberg started on the 16th. Axios puts the price above $8 billion mostly in stock, other outlets cite $7.5 billion, against OpenRouter's $1.3B Series B valuation from May. Alex Atallah promised "same...
The WSJ reported July 24 that Stripe is negotiating for the model-routing marketplace at roughly $10 billion against the ~$1.3 billion OpenRouter carried after a May round. OpenRouter already runs its own billing on Stripe. This would be Stripe's largest move beyond payments,...
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