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OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

openrouter.ai

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Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#2

Post by minimaxir »

As someone who uses OpenRouter extensively (and wrote an unintentional adjacent PR piece a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317294 ), it's definitely the best way to try out new models without fiddling with each providers distinct APIs which is becoming a recurring concern as of late.

That said, I don't understand the people who use something a full agentic backbone with expensive models like Claude Opus with OpenRouter because that 5% surcharge is meaningful at that level of cost instead of going with the source API providers. But people are clearly doing it, and it's pure revenue.

Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#5

Post by nadermx »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

As someone who uses OpenRouter extensively (and wrote an unintentional adjacent PR piece a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317294 ), it's definitely the best way to try out new models without fiddling with each providers distinct APIs which is becoming a recurring concern as of late. That said, I don't understand the people who use something a full agentic backbone with expensive models like Clau…

Convenience has a markup

Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#6

Post by simonw »

It took me quite a while to come round to OpenRouter. Originally I didn't understand why anyone would put a proxy between them and an LLM, but it actually adds some quite significant value:

1. By far the lowest friction way to support and try out all the models.

2. They offer billing caps! Most model providers still don't do this [EDIT: maybe they do, see reply comment], but if you're going to run anything in public it's very useful to have hard limits so it doesn't cost you $1m overnight because someone started abusing it.

3. Their rankings are one of the more interesting signals for which models are popular, despite their flaws (most OpenAI and Anthropic users don't go via OpenRouter, it's currently not possible to tell the difference between many users switching v.s. one "whale" changing their preferred model)

Given how API costs are becoming meaningful for a lot of companies now, having a provider like OpenRouter to help measure your spend and easily experiment with and switch providers feels like a valuable service.

Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#7

Post by bwfan123 »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

As someone who uses OpenRouter extensively (and wrote an unintentional adjacent PR piece a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317294 ), it's definitely the best way to try out new models without fiddling with each providers distinct APIs which is becoming a recurring concern as of late. That said, I don't understand the people who use something a full agentic backbone with expensive models like Clau…

There is a lot of dumb token spend right now - tokenmaxing and such. Economic cost of token is not being evaluated carefully because there is fomo and no one wants to be left behind. But folks are waking up to it, and dumb token spending is not sustainable and will revert.

Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#8

Post by furyofantares »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

As someone who uses OpenRouter extensively (and wrote an unintentional adjacent PR piece a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317294 ), it's definitely the best way to try out new models without fiddling with each providers distinct APIs which is becoming a recurring concern as of late. That said, I don't understand the people who use something a full agentic backbone with expensive models like Clau…

Better uptime? Given it will be routed to one of Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, Claude Platform on AWS, Google Vertex (Europe) or Google Vertex

Re: OpenRouter raises $113M Series B

#10

Post by SilverElfin »

simonw wrote: post #6

It took me quite a while to come round to OpenRouter. Originally I didn't understand why anyone would put a proxy between them and an LLM, but it actually adds some quite significant value: 1. By far the lowest friction way to support and try out all the models. 2. They offer billing caps! Most model providers still don't do this [EDIT: maybe they do, see reply comment], but if you're going to run anything in public…

The biggest benefit is that it creates competition among models. If more people use open weight models or models from other providers, it’ll be harder to ban them. Which is what OpenAI and Anthropic will try to accomplish. OpenAI by lobbying the Trump administration for favorable treatment (see Brockman’s MAGA PAC donations), Anthropic by using religious leaders and nonprofits to push “safety” justifications for difficult regulations.
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