- OpenSea founder Alex Atallah pivoted to AI in 2024, founding OpenRouter, a unified API for multiple LLMs.
- Stripe recently acquired OpenRouter for over $7 billion, per Bloomberg.
- Meanwhile, OpenSea continues to decline, with monthly trading volume likely below $20 million in August 2026.
- Atallah’s exit highlights the shift from NFTs to AI, while OpenSea’s valuation remains stuck at $13.3 billion since 2022.
OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah made a timely pivot from NFTs to Artificial Intelligence, and it just paid off. This week, Bloomberg reported that Stripe had purchased Atallah’s AI startup OpenRouter for over $7 billion.
OpenSea once dominated the NFT space, seeing over $2.7 billion in daily volume in May 2022. However, its trading activity has fallen off a cliff, with August 2026 likely to post less than $20 million in turnover, according to data.
After raising $300 million from Paradigm and a16z, OpenSea reached a $13.3 billion valuation. Yet the NFT bust, compounded by FTX’s collapse, drove visitors and traders away, and the site has never recovered.
Consequently, Atallah launched OpenRouter as a unified API for developers to access multiple large language models. The sale to Stripe marks a significant exit, though still below OpenSea’s peak valuation.
Meanwhile, OpenSea languishes with no new funding since 2022. It remains unclear whether Atallah will reinvest his windfall into the company or move on entirely.
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