That’s great for the team. Though as a user of openrouter, I am worried that the much larger company will soon find ways to enshittify it :S
OpenRouter is joining Stripe
141–150 of 532 posts
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#142It 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.
Minor nitpick: don’t confuse sales with negotiations.
Negotiations start when sales is done.
These were highly capable negotiators.
But most likely also good salesmen.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#143Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#144What's with naming proprietary stuff "open"?
It's following the open closed principle.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Now that's the value. OpenRouter has the power to step on the air hose of any provider they don't like.
That's Google's real power. Works for them. Between search, ads, and the "app store", they can crush most companies. OpenRouter's power is only in one area. For now.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#146What's with naming proprietary stuff "open"?
Would "OpenSourceRouter" be a trademark violation?
I've built one in Rust and want to market it.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#147Could someone explain why these routers are so valuable and pulling acquisitions in the billions?
It's Netflix before the unbundling happened
Ha that’s a really interesting comparison! I guess the difference is that OR directly sends revenue to model providers, so maybe they’re more likely to continue working together? But I can totally see it go the other way once a provider feels confident enough their users won’t switch away. At that point the OpenRouter tax, however small, will be a problem to solve.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#148Earlier 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).
Stripe operates in a very regulated industry where new entrance is difficult
OpenRouter is commodity stuff, I've never used it personally and picked alternatives. The sense I got from people who said they used it was that they are on average penny pinchers. That does not seem like an ideal user base
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#149That’s great for the team. Though as a user of openrouter, I am worried that the much larger company will soon find ways to enshittify it :S
Switching costs are zero and alternatives are plentiful.
OpenRouter is a name.
Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe
#150Hm. This seems random. Other than the fact that they are both technology companies, is there anything else that they have in common?
Taking a % cut on top of every operation