Open-weight AI companies are the Valley's hottest acquisition targets

Stripe acquired OpenRouter, the top provider of open-weight models to businesses, for more than $7 billion, two weeks after Nvidia struck a $6 billion agreement with open-weight model builder Poolside. Nvidia is reportedly in talks to acquire Hugging Face for $13 billion, though the deal remains unconfirmed. The moves reflect Nvidia's effort to reduce dependence on hyperscalers as OpenAI and Google build their own inference chips, including OpenAI's Jalapeño. Adoption remains small: 6% of companies use open-weight models, per Ramp.