Nvidia tried to buy AI model marketplace OpenRouter at the last minute this summer but was rebuffed, according to a new report.

In July, Nvidia learned that OpenRouter was about to be acquired, with Databricks and Stripe already in talks. CEO Jensen Huang wanted in, and Nvidia executives said they were prepared to make a generous offer but needed more time to evaluate the deal.

OpenRouter’s founder was unwilling to wait. Nvidia never issued a formal offer, and Stripe secured the startup with an $8 billion bid, announced on August 19. The details were reported by CoinDesk this week.

Nvidia quickly moved on. Over the next two months it finalised deals totalling over $140 billion, including a $105 billion credit facility. It later agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.

The two deals show how valuable neutral AI infrastructure has become. OpenRouter now handles more than 10 trillion tokens a day across 400-plus models for over 10 million developers.