It's open (router) season

Stripe just bought OpenRouter for something north of $7 billion. Reports differ on the exact number, the NYT says about $7.5bn and Axios says over $8bn in cash and stock, but either way it is roughly a 5x markup on the $1.3bn valuation they reportedly raised at back in May. Three months.

Twelve of their roles are on the board today, all fully remote in the US, engineering starting at $215k. If you have been waiting for a reason to look properly at AI infrastructure, be aware that an acquisition is usually the moment a careers page goes quiet. This is the window, not the beginning of one.

Elsewhere, Grafana Labs posted the same job in three countries at once. Software Engineer, Platform Metal:

- Ireland: €81,600 to €97,920
- Spain: €65,280 to €78,336
- UK: £72,177 to £86,612

Same title, same team, same week. Spain sits about 20% under Ireland in the same currency.

One last thing worth noticing. LiveKit is hiring a Software Engineer for Agents, Kong wants a Senior Staff Engineer for an Agent Marketplace, Cognition is after an Applied AI Engineer in ANZ, and two of the OpenRouter roles are Applied AI. Four companies building the plumbing under agents, inside a fortnight. Whatever you make of the hype, that is where the money is going.

Good luck out there internet frens.

Roles in this issue