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OpenRouter is joining Stripe

openrouter.ai

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Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#61

Post by amcvitty »

jonahx wrote: post #39
Lalabadie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where it's coming from, I like Stripe's long-stated mission ("To increase the GDP of the Internet"). This version is dumb/empty, and reads like brown-nosing Stripe.

> I like Stripe's long-stated mission ("To increase the GDP of the Internet"). Also corporate speak. Their mission is take their cut of the Internet's GDP. Nothing against them, they provide real value for that cut. But that's what the actual mission is.

That feels unfair to read it that way. The mission as stated is that they will not only take a cut of the pie but grow the pie. If the total value they add is greater than the value they capture, everyone wins.

You might not believe them, but that’s what the words are supposed to mean.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#62

Post by mbreese »

jonahx wrote: post #44
dwa3592 wrote: post #38

I guess this makes sense for the scenario when we will use machine intelligence as a currency, maybe 15-20 years from now? - like I can pay 15 minutes of inference for a dozen bananas? and the banana seller uses those 15 minutes to do banana shelling or removing weeds from their farms or whatever i guess when robots are doing everything. right??

I think this is exactly the bet they're making. I was totally confused by what connected the two companies until I realized "tokens" are basically a nascent, and rapidly growing, "currency".

Except that tokens aren’t completely fungible yet. But, I think we’re approaching the point where it is close enough to be a “proof of work” analog.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#63

Post by znnajdla »

gavino wrote: post #3

Could someone explain why these routers are so valuable and pulling acquisitions in the billions?

Read Ben Thompson to understand aggregation theory. Many of the largest internet companies, like Google and Amazon, are simply aggregators. OpenRouter is an aggregator of AI tooling. Stripe itself was just a convenience layer on top of merchant gateways (another aggregator). OpenRouter is so big they can negotiate special contracts with OpenAI for special rates.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#65

Post by abixb »

srameshc wrote: post #21

It is amazing how we watch from the sidelines these aquisitions and think .... why such big bill ? But it takes a good team to sell and everytime someone is successful it is because probably they have great sellers who believe in their value and demand a price. It is certainly not an easy task to get to the finish line for a startup and pay back their investors.

Curious on what OpenRouter's true moat is? It's just an LLM API routing framework, right?

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#66

Post by etskinner »

zamio wrote: post #43
sidcool wrote: post #2

Good for OpenRouter. They have a great DevEx. The $7 billion is tad high, but Stripe can afford it.

What's good about their DevEx?

Speaking for myself (I'm not the GP comment): The platform 'just works', has great reporting interface to help understand excatly what usage happened when, and integrates well with lots of different harnesses.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#68

Post by yipinwong »

dwa3592 wrote: post #38

I guess this makes sense for the scenario when we will use machine intelligence as a currency, maybe 15-20 years from now? - like I can pay 15 minutes of inference for a dozen bananas? and the banana seller uses those 15 minutes to do banana shelling or removing weeds from their farms or whatever i guess when robots are doing everything. right??

This won't work because you consider humans as a logical being (Homosapiens is a misnormer).

People will revolt first should one have to trade physical goods (such as food that we need for daily lives) with computing power.

It only takes a few people to incite.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#69

Post by dgellow »

polotics wrote: post #53
dgellow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokens are not a currency, tokens aren’t fungible and cannot be traded

to a certain extent, openrouter did manage to turn tokens into a currency. The fungibility is there, as much as you don't care so much if you're getting your token from novita or some other player, these become fungible.

They aren’t trading tokens, they are a market for compute. The difference matters quite a lot. What you have in openrouter is the ability to exchange money for compute at the vendor of your choice.

We are basically back to 2020 trying to get people to understand that an NFT is NOT the underlying asset it abstractly represents…

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#70

Post by dwa3592 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #45
dwa3592 wrote: post #38

I guess this makes sense for the scenario when we will use machine intelligence as a currency, maybe 15-20 years from now? - like I can pay 15 minutes of inference for a dozen bananas? and the banana seller uses those 15 minutes to do banana shelling or removing weeds from their farms or whatever i guess when robots are doing everything. right??

I hope we aren't on track for this future and if we are I hope a substantial number of people rebel. This is among the more hellish futures I can imagine. Our worth as people reduced to how much access we have to compute. Gross.

I hope not;

there are a few assumptions in this future- the biggest one is - we will have to attain a baseline intelligence which is useful for everyone which is not true today. even fable fumbles hard!!

second is that everyone will have to own a medium to use this intelligence (aka robots). like a currency is useless if you can't use it.

to me this is the least daunting scenario. all other scenarios lead to mass slavery.

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