In late August, capital in Silicon Valley flowed heavily into intermediate links of the AI industry chain. Three acquisition and investment transactions totaling $26 billion marked a shift in the focus of industry profits from intelligent manufacturing to intelligent circulation. Among them, Stripe acquired OpenRouter for $7.5 billion to $8 billion; Nvidia invested approximately $6 billion in Poolside and acquired Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. These mergers focused on the entire process of developers selecting models, adjusting models, and making payments, aiming to address the trend of homogenized model capabilities and the need for increased routing value in the Agent era. Although the model supply comes from China, both parties in these transactions are American companies. Ramp data shows that the proportion of American companies using model platforms has risen to 6.1%, which has not yet significantly affected their spending on OpenAI and Anthropic. However, the growth in the penetration rate of open-source and Chinese models is diverting existing customers from closed-source models.
In late August, capital in Silicon Valley flowed heavily into intermediate links of the AI industry chain. Stripe acquired OpenRouter for $7.5 billion to $8 billion, while Nvidia invested approximately $6 billion in Poolside and acquired Hugging Face for $12.9 billion in a wholly-owned deal. The three transactions totaled $26 billion, with buyers being payment companies and chip manufacturers, indicating that the profits in the AI industry are shifting from intelligent manufacturing to intelligent circulation. Although the model supply is in China, both parties in the transactions are American companies. Ramp data shows that the proportion of American companies using model platforms has risen to 6.1%, but this has not yet significantly affected their spending on OpenAI and Anthropic; the growth in open-source and Chinese model penetration is shifting the existing customers of closed-source models. The common focus of these mergers and acquisitions lies in the link between developers selecting models, adjusting them, and making payments, aiming to address the homogenization of model capabilities and the trend of increased routing value in the Agent era. Chinese models on Hugging Face…