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OpenRouter is joining Stripe

openrouter.ai

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Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#82

Post by marcsnid »

edoceo wrote: post #80

I've seen three or four others building routers. How hard is that really? The folk I spoke to needed only a few millions to build it (they claim). I've seen prototype of some too that looked pretty simple. Maybe the whole thing is driven by enterprise wanting the external vendor support?

It's a fairly high scale, but yeah I don't think it's terribly hard. Negotiating rates with the providers seems like it'd be the hardest part to me.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#83

Post by bubblegumcrisis »

rkangel wrote: post #71
abixb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, and Stripe is "just" a payments platform. Openrouter is easy, reliable and performant (like Stripe).

Also it's name has "open" in it. Which means you can do what you want with it, and it's all open source!

Just the other day, I tried to have openrouter route to my local ollama, and it refused. Apparently I have to pay for this privilege. How wonderful.

Open open (op)en. Open open (op)en. Clo-o-o-ooooo-sed.. (sing with Wagner flight of the V)

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#84

Post by swatcoder »

drob518 wrote: post #32

Hm. This seems random. Other than the fact that they are both technology companies, is there anything else that they have in common?

In the event that the AI bubble doesn't burst, Stripe needs to have a stake in whatever's coming. They have time to explore and pursue specific strategies, but they just needed to make some big and compatible buy.

In this particular case, OpenRouter represents a M x N bridging and enhancement layer much like Stripe themselves, and so must address a lot of parallel technical, dealmaking, accounting, and legal challenges.

It may not be obvious on the surface because they seem to be working in such different domain, but they have to address a lot of the same problems in comparable ways and that makes it a pretty darn good fit.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#85

Post by OleksandrC »

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?

I am working on my own agent implementation (https://usehax.dev/), and I can praise OpenRouter for being seemingly the only provider endpoint that actually gives proper API for gathering available models and their capabilities (context length, image support, pricing, etc), reports exact routing details and total cost in the response, and provides an endpoint for obtaining current available credits (for "/usage"-like command). So for OpenRouter specifically I could deliver a really good experience out-of-the-box (always fresh models and metadata, exact pricing, etc).

You would think that these things would be standard fare, but they really are not. Other providers need metadata from a separate catalog, don't report pricing, don't really report available credits / usage either.

So yes, OpenRouter does have a good DevEx.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#87

Post by computomatic »

edoceo wrote: post #80

I've seen three or four others building routers. How hard is that really? The folk I spoke to needed only a few millions to build it (they claim). I've seen prototype of some too that looked pretty simple. Maybe the whole thing is driven by enterprise wanting the external vendor support?

My surface-level assessment is that building a router is easy, but routing efficiently is difficult. For the latter problem, traffic provides signals which you can use to improve routing rules, creating a feedback loop. More traffic => more feedback => better routing. So a lot of the value of Openrouter would be that they are the most adopted router (I think?) and so likely have the most data to (potentially) produce the best router. I'm only speculating.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#89

Post by viccis »

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.

Corollary to this is that whenever companies acquire smaller companies and lay off the small company's sales teams, they deserve what they get. Looking at you, big company that turned my last one from nearly a billion valuation into a $20M fire sale in 3-4 years.
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