Stripe in talks to buy OpenRouter for ~10B

(wsj.com)

54 points | by htrp 10 hours ago

9 comments

  • chromatin 9 hours ago
    Extremely relevant:

    Ramp Router: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253

    • claw-el 2 hours ago
      Maybe 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).
  • truthbe 54 minutes ago
    Damn, any alternatives?
  • rootsudo 31 minutes ago
    God, 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.
  • BobbyTables2 7 hours ago
    Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just spend $1B reimplementing it?

    (Of course that is absurd, $10M would be plenty)

    • sds357 6 hours ago
      The value is in the existing customers, isn't it? Not so much the product.
      • kennywinker 4 hours ago
        What 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 3 hours ago
          Seems 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 23 minutes ago
            Just another reason this would be a mind-numbingly dumb acquisition.
    • dnnehgf 3 hours ago
      quick you are a saas company pulling 3b cash annually how do you deploy it
  • Taikhoom2010 9 hours ago
    • evenhash 8 hours 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 7 hours ago
        You jest but this is basically exactly what happened in crypto.
    • walthamstow 39 minutes 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

  • thomasingalls 9 hours ago
    Do they have to
  • subarctic 9 hours ago
    Interesting. I guess it fits since Openrouter's main value is in consolidating payment to all these different model providers
  • zb3 8 hours ago
    Does 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 3 hours ago
      Do sustainable tech startups actually exist?
  • fractorial 6 hours ago
    Please, no.