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Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
41–50 of 54 posts
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stripe isn’t exactly a dumb company. When someone smart does something seemingly super dumb, more likely than not you’re the one missing something, not them. It’s an opportunity to ask, “what am I missing?”, and learn from it.
I didn't say it was super dumb, it was more of a reflection on that's how much a wrapper is worth today.
It is not just the software. Let's not forget the existing customer base, an opportunity cost to build something as mature as openrouter (even with LLMs). Perhaps it is worth it for them.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#43If LLM providers continue grow and become such a standard part of the tech stack of any deployment, this acquisition makes a lot of sense. It's just another payment management system for stripe. It's fun to see someone being able to exit so well without owning any model.
The acquisition makes no sense, as most LLM providers only reason not to forbid them right now, is because they were funded by exactly the same VCs as the providers. Go check. Of all the no moats they are the example of no moat . Its seconds switch to another router if even that is tolerated. And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that... But the…
You over-estimate the amount of sway investors have on Stripe. If VCs had the influence you're describing, Stripe would have gone public many years ago.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#44I would not be suprised to see Cloudflare launch a competitor in the next 6 mo. They've done similar before, and it fits their "middle man/service provider" vibe well. OpenRouter is good because of the market ecosystem play. I see this fragmenting similar to game distribution -- a handful of 3rd-party disti, 1 first-party disti, and some exclusivity/lockup/limited support outside of first party. I am very interested…
Cloudflare AI Gateway launched in beta in 2023, and went GA in 2024. Recent overview: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ai-platform/
It's pretty bad though compared to openrouter tbh. I expected it to have some inbuilt cloudflare access access control, but it doesn't have that for improving security either within the team Easier to just use openrouter tbh.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#45Not exactly related, but I've seen people suggesting a new path for opens source funding that would be around tokens instead of cash. One might be able to pledge tokens towards a feature or fix instead of cash.
Even the suggestion of this absent an implementation hints at a future for tokens as a commodity. But it is interesting to think of it as some kind of new asset class, between commodity and currency.
I mean, we already think of tokens in the form of currency in crypto (e.g. NFT). There may be more than just similarity in the name choice when it comes to AI tokens. One could even think of things like "exchange rates", etc.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#46I would not be suprised to see Cloudflare launch a competitor in the next 6 mo. They've done similar before, and it fits their "middle man/service provider" vibe well. OpenRouter is good because of the market ecosystem play. I see this fragmenting similar to game distribution -- a handful of 3rd-party disti, 1 first-party disti, and some exclusivity/lockup/limited support outside of first party. I am very interested…
Cloudflare AI Gateway launched in beta in 2023, and went GA in 2024. Recent overview: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ai-platform/
Part of the issue -- cloudlfare is an inference provider for models (eg glm-4.7-flash) on openrouter. Very very hard to get partners to signup if you're going to directly compete with them.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#47I both think OpenRouter is not worth 7B$ and Stripe might have made a brilliant move in making this purchase, honestly just troubling thoughts around model inference and model token as the new traded currency go through my head. Imagine if Stripe's end game is to control which producers of tokens become visible for a price aka middleman tax for tokens. If AI is as big a change as people claim honestly AWS should have…
I specifically think many of the hyperscalers are a bad choice to platform on because they have their own models. You cannot build a viable platform business while directly competing with your potential customers and partners, the incentives are too out-of-whack. Stripe/CF/Vercel are presumably not going to do foundational model development, so safe there. They are already platform plays to begin with, this strengthe…
I can bet AWS won't be doing any serious foundational model development, I knew folks on their AGI team now it's not even big enough to compete with the chinese labs... :3
Azure I am not sure how long they will be around doing MAI thinking models, I feel like they will pivot to smaller simpler enterprise only models. And given they already own npm and github openrouter might have made sense though I think they might buy huggingface, not that I want them to but it just feels like it.
Google IDK what google is doing exactly all my friends I knew in the AI teams are out a while ago, so maybe they are doing something really great we just don't know yet.
But I feel like it makes sense for hyperscalers since they can push their weight around a lot better than openrouter and can offer extra compute when providers are under crunch at higher prices to handle spikes. I think they are the only ones who can truly do fluid compute for GPU/AI in the short term(next couple of years).
Maybe after than we might have other big players in the space. Given the sheer scale of buildout I can almost guarantee we will see this pivot, otherwise there is too much hardware and token prices are too high.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I specifically think many of the hyperscalers are a bad choice to platform on because they have their own models. You cannot build a viable platform business while directly competing with your potential customers and partners, the incentives are too out-of-whack. Stripe/CF/Vercel are presumably not going to do foundational model development, so safe there. They are already platform plays to begin with, this strengthe…
I can bet AWS won't be doing any serious foundational model development, I knew folks on their AGI team now it's not even big enough to compete with the chinese labs... :3 Azure I am not sure how long they will be around doing MAI thinking models, I feel like they will pivot to smaller simpler enterprise only models. And given they already own npm and github openrouter might have made sense though I think they might…
IDK what happened to AWS, other than Amazon's cultural reputation is so bad it may be hard to hire the best eng.
Azure, GCP, I generally agree. The Neoclouds will drive prices into the basement, I think custom silicon/data moat/ease to deploy will be the hyperscaler's edge.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that... A middleman that adds compliance & regulation while skimming a slice off the top for themselves: You just described credit cards - stripe's core business...
Very much the same line of business as Amazon Bedrock except OpenRouter gives more options (choice of where hosted, data retention options and so on).
>> choice of where hosted,
You dont understand Bedrock fundamental use case.
Re: Stripe to Buy OpenRouter for $7B
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The acquisition makes no sense, as most LLM providers only reason not to forbid them right now, is because they were funded by exactly the same VCs as the providers. Go check. Of all the no moats they are the example of no moat . Its seconds switch to another router if even that is tolerated. And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that... But the…
> And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that... A middleman that adds compliance & regulation while skimming a slice off the top for themselves: You just described credit cards - stripe's core business...
How is the middleman going to add compliance if its not the provider of the LLMs? And if that was possible OpenRouter would have done it already...