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Stripe in talks to buy OpenRouter for ~10B
- Taikhoom2010 3mo agohttps://taikhooms.substack.com/p/why-openrouter-can-be-the-next-great?r=2pgab7 https://taikhooms.substack.com/p/why-openrouter-can-be-the-n...
- evenhash 3mo ago> it has clear platform dynamics. It is an aggregator of AI models, and once enterprises use it, that creates switching costs since all your AI expense is in one place: logs, budgets, etc, so switching would be painful and generally not make a lot of sense. Clearly what we need is a Router Router, to avoid router lock-in.
- jackb4040 3mo agoYou jest but this is basically exactly what happened in crypto.
- walthamstow 3mo ago> It aggregate’s practially ever Large Language Model, then bundles access and takes a flat fee. Well, at least I know AI didn't write it
- Taikhoom2010 2mo agoHow Am I wrong?
- chromatin 3mo agoExtremely relevant: Ramp Router: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253
- claw-el 3mo agoMaybe there were more than 1 bidder for OpenRouter… Regardless, a business like OpenRouter may be best in the form of a complement product of something else (like payment processing).
- thomasingalls 3mo agoDo they have to
- subarctic 3mo agoInteresting. I guess it fits since Openrouter's main value is in consolidating payment to all these different model providers
- zb3 3mo agoDoes it mean openrouter can't sustain on its own? If so, bad news, new owner 'd surely want it to be profitable, so expect price hike.. :<
- BobbyTables2 3mo agoDo sustainable tech startups actually exist?
- BobbyTables2 3mo agoWouldn’t it be cheaper to just spend $1B reimplementing it? (Of course that is absurd, $10M would be plenty)
- sds357 3mo agoThe value is in the existing customers, isn't it? Not so much the product.
- kennywinker 3mo agoWhat percentage of the potential market does openrouter have? Like even if they have 100% of today’s customers, they probably have like 3% of 5-years-from-now’s customers.
- BobbyTables2 3mo agoSeems like it’s also assuming in 5 years from now people will still want an AI router. How many people even use more than one search engine? A “search engine router” wouldn’t be very successful… If AI tokens become unlimited like cell phone minutes, why bother routing?
- kennywinker 3mo agoJust another reason this would be a mind-numbingly dumb acquisition.
- ikidd 3mo agoNothing about this bubble makes sense. Why should this?
- bulbar 3mo ago> If AI tokens become unlimited Why would they? OpenAI and Anthropic aren't even profitable yet.
- 3mo ago
- fractorial 3mo agoPlease, no.
- truthbe 3mo agoDamn, any alternatives?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rootsudo 3mo agoGod, no, I hate how stripe went from a wonder child in 2014 with its propaganda spiel about “we pay all employees 70k/year” to what it is now, PayPal of the 2010s.
- jnyst1985 3mo agoSmart move, I imagine OpenRouter’s business model is very appealing to Stripe.