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OpenRouter is joining Stripe

openrouter.ai

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Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#131

Post by roncesvalles »

jm4 wrote: post #125
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?

They are the leading LLM API routing tool. Stripe is the leading payments API. They are betting on OpenRouter being as important to developers as payments. Both let them take a small percentage of a shitload of transactions. Being the goto service for APIs and executing well is the moat. Someone else would have to beat the volume leader on price or beat them on execution. Good luck. The only realistic competitors wou…

I don't understand why one would let a router handle their LLM request (other than for routing it to the cheapest inference provider for open models).

When I build an application that uses LLMs, it's tuned and tested for a specific model only. LLMs are not really drop-in replacements of each other, even different versions of the same series.

The pertinent question isn't why OpenRouter but why a router company is worth 7B.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#132

Post by nonethewiser »

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).

Yeah and the kids down the street are “just” a lemonade stand.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#133

Post by KennyBlanken »

itsdesmond wrote: post #7

> Today, we are excited to announce that we are joining forces with Stripe, to power the next wave of GDP growth globally. This is some high level meaningless corpo speak.

It's particularly stupid given that if you look at where the tokens are being spent, the top application overwhelmingly is Hermes Agent. It's more than the next six clients combined.

Hermes Agent is AI slop "ai assistant" software that is being entirely developed by a bunch of AI agents. They are stuck in a constant whack-a-mole bug fix session because the agents keep breaking things.

Openrouter is being entirely propped up by garbage-tier software that is only popular because it's being endlessly hyped by idiot youtuber AI Agent Bros who are so uncreative and incapable of critical thought, they're using AI agents to tell them what content to make.

When people finally realize how bad Hermes is, OpenRouter is pretty fucked. And then when all the weebs writing furry porn get bored and move on, they'll be fucked even more.

What's really bad about this: Stripe is so tightly tied to the credit card industry that said industry's obsession with morality policing will force Stripe to start censoring openrouter.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#134

Post by johndough »

scrollop wrote: post #102
meric_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenRouter is already the entrenched go-to router tbh. There's competitors (Vercel) but they're already well known. Stripe can also make them more competitive because they can waive / profit off the transaction cost. Considering stripe takes like a 3% fee, and the openrouter markup is 5%, that's a pretty big boost. Now is that enough revenue to earn back 7B.... I'm not too sure. I guess they're betting realy big that…

And trustedrouter which is a bit cheaper and more private

Doesn't TrustedRouter cost more than OpenRouter? (5.5% markup vs 5%)

Also, TrustedRouter's website is full of slop, which does not inspire much confidence.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#137

Post by Dylan16807 »

nateb2022 wrote: post #114
TechSquidTV wrote: post #108

7 million would sound fair to me. 7 billion? Explain yourself.

OpenRouter already takes in around $140M in yearly revenue. How would paying 5% of yearly revenue make any sense for an acquisition??

> How would paying 5% of yearly revenue make any sense for an acquisition??

50x revenue is also a crazy number. I wonder what happens more, companies selling for ≤5% revenue or companies selling for ≥50x revenue.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#138

Post by shafyy »

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.

It's just the same VCs moving money from one pocket to the other.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#139

Post by solidasparagus »

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?

One of the main real values of OpenRouter is that it is a single payment relationship for users that enables access to many downstream vendors. I'm not super convinced it is a good purchase, but right now OpenRouter is the financial middleman for token spend. It is also the centralization point for tokens, allowing for value-add features that are industry-wide, for example budgets - and I think that structure has parallels to Stripe products like Checkout or Identity.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#140

Post by ahepp »

Nextgrid wrote: post #106
rkangel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Stripe is "just" a payments platform Counterpoint: you can't just go to Visa/Mastercard or a merchant acquirer out there and set up an account on the same terms that Stripe can. On the other hand, you can sign up to any LLM provider and get API access on terms that are the same or better (since I'm sure they don't appreciate having a middleman and would benefit from incentivizing direct usage) than OpenRouter gets.

Will that necessarily be true in the future? Would we not expect that openrouter will develop the ability to negotiate special pricing?
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